We would rather direct our attention to whatever is really meritorious in the work. The following song, written to the touching and beautiful Irish air of Gramachree, appears to us exquisitely tender. Mr. Russel thinks it is impossible to read them without tears. Let the reader judge. "If I had thought thou could'st have died, I might not weep for thee; But I forgot, when by thy side, That thou could'st mortal be; But when I speak-thou dost not say, And now I feel, as well I may, "If thou would'st stay, e'en as thou art, I still might press thy silent heart, And where thy smiles have been! But there I lay thee in thy grave And I am now alone! "I do not think, where'er thou art, And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart, In thinking too of thee; Yet there was round thee such a dawn, Of light ne'er seen before, As fancy never could have drawn, And never can restore!" The following is of a sprightlier mood. It is in the difficult metre of the Lines on Sir John Moore, the management of which Mr. Wolfe appears to have perfectly possessed. "Oh my love has an eye of the softest blue, Yet it was not that that won me; But a little bright drop from her soul was there, "I might have pass'd that lovely cheek, Nor, perchance, my heart have left me; But the sensitive blush that came trembling there, "I might have forgotten that red, red lip- But there was a smile from the sunshine within, Think not 'tis nothing but lifeless clay,- 484 Russell's Remains of the late Rev. Charles Wolfes "Let me not hear the Nightingale sing, The feeling and mind that comes whispering forth, "Who could blame had I loved that face, Ere my eye could twice explore her; There is a great deal of good sense in Mr. Wolfe's remarks upon religious poetry. *The poems upon which you desire my opinion seem to be the production of a truly spiritual mind, a mind deeply exercised in experimental religion, which sees every object through a pure and holy medium, and turns every thing it contemplates into devotion. But their very excellence, in this respect, seems, in the present instance, to constitute their leading defect. Their object, if I understand it aright, is to make popular music a channel by which religious feeling may be diffused through society; and thus, at the same time, to redeem the na. tional music from the profaneness and licentiousness to which it has been prostituted. As to the first object: the natural language of a spiritual man, which would remind one of the like spirit of much of his internal experience, would be not only uninteresting, but absolutely unintelligible to the generality of mankind. He speaks of hopes and fears, of pleasures and pains, which they could only comprehend by having previously felt them. "You remember that it is said of the new song that was sung before the throne' that no man could learn that song, save those that were redeemed from the earth; and, therefore, it often happens, that those who best understand that music, are more intelligible to heavenly than earthly beings: they are often better understood by angels than by men. have often attained renders it not only painful but impossible to accommodate themThe high degree of spirituality which they selves to the ordinary feelings of mankind. They cannot stoop even though it be to conquer. To the world, their effusions are in an unknown language. In fact, they often take for granted the very work to be done: they presuppose that communion of feeling and unity of spirit between themselves and the world, which it is their primary object to produce; and when they do not produce this effect, they may even do mischief; for the spontaneous language of a religious mind is (generally speaking) revolting to the great mass of society; they shrink from it, as they do from the Bible. "Just consider all the caution, the judgment, and the skill requisite in order to introduce religion profitably into general conversation, and then you may conceive what will be the fate of a song, to which a man has recourse for amusement, and which he expects will appeal to his feelings, when he finds it employed on a sub. ject to which he has not learnt to attach any idea of pleasure, and which speaks to feelings he never experienced. It is on this account I conceive that a song intended to make religion popular should not be entirely of a religious cast, that it should take in as wide a range as any other song, should appeal to every passion and feeling of our nature not in itself sinful, should employ all the scenery, the imagery and circumstance of the songs of this world, while religion should be indirectly introduced, or delicately insinuated. I think we shall come to the same conclusion, if we consider the reformation of the national music as the primary object. The predominant feelings excited and expressed by our national airs, however exquisitely delightful, are manifestly human; and it is evident that in order to do them justice we must follow the prevailing tone. work of the words can hardly be spiritual; but a gleam of religion might be, The strain and groundevery now and then, tastefully admitted, with the happiest effect. But indeed it appears so difficult, that in the whole range of poetry there does not occur to me at present an instance in which it has been successfully executed. The only* piece which I now recollect as at all exemplifying my meaning is Cowper's 'Alexander Selkirk,' beginning, 'I am monarch of all I survey,' which I believe has "The author probably would have also instanced the beautiful Scotch ballad, 'I'm wearing awa', John,' if it had occurred to his memory."-Ed. never been set to music. It is not professedly religious; nay, the situation, the sentiments and the feelings are such as the commonest reader can, at once, conceive to be his own. It needs neither a spiritual man, nor a poet, nor a man of taste, or of education, to enter into immediate sympathy with bim: it is not until the fourth stanza (after he has taken possession of his reader) that he introduces a religious sentiment, to which, however, he had been gradually ascending; and even then accompanies and recommends it with what may, perhaps, be called the romantic and picturesque of religion, the sound of the church-going bell,' &c. He then appears to desert the subject altogether, and only returns to it (as it were) accidentally, but, with what beauty and effect in the last four lines." In the course of the volume we are informed that Mr. Wolfe was a distinguished member of the Historical Society,-a debating club in Trinity College, Dublin, which has been suppressed since his time. It was an institution of very questionable utility, as the style of poetry, eloquence, and essay-composition, which was most successful in it, exhibited all the characters of the most vitiated taste. Mr. Wolfe had the honour of opening one of its sessions with a speech from the chair. Fragments of that oration are injudiciously inserted in this collection. The "Prayer to Sleep" which, as Mr. Russell remarks, was erroneously attributed, in Blackwood's Magazine, to the author of the Lines on Sir John Moore, is really by Professor Wilson of Edinburgh, and is contained in the second volume of his poems, lately collected. It is odd that such a mistake should have been made. [Ibid. SELECTED FOR THE MUSEUM. Matilda; a Tale of the Day. Post 8vo. Colburn. 1825. 10s. 6d. pp. 379. IT has been much the fashion, of late years, to ascribe anonymous novels to persons moving in the higher ranks of life. Thus "Tremaine" has been imputed to several noblemen, without being as yet owned by any body; thus, too, Matild has already glittered under four or five distinguished names, though it seems to be pretty generally agreed that the author is Lord Normanby. There is not a principle, not a sentiment, not even perhaps a line, in the book, which any man need blush to acknowledge. As a literary composition it is evidently the work of an enlightened, liberal, and accomplished mind,-as a story, it is fraught with the deepest interest, and at the same time forms one of the most eloquent lessons of morality that we have ever perused. If the narrative be founded on fact, as the author more than once declares it to be, the effect which it is calculated to produce on society is of the greatest importance. The pictures which it presents of English fashionable life, both as it exists at home and on the Continent, are manifestly copied from nature, and are executed with great vigour and beauty. Perhaps there is a want of keeping in the grouping and colouring, so to speak, which has arisen from an anxiety on the part of the author to introduce variety and contrasts into his scenes. But the charm and the value of the work consist in the masterly description, which it exhibits of the fatal progress and issue of a passion, innocent in its commencement, frustrated in its progress, revived under circumstances which ought to have prevailed on both parties to check their feelings, till at last it overwhelmed their sense of duty, and with guilt brought upon them the most exquisite misery. Augustus Arlingford formed an attachment in early life for Lady Matilda Delaval, which she fully returned. Equal in family, though she was his superior in fortune, they were not, however, destined to be married. During a temporary absence of Arlingford from England, his conduct was foully misrepresented to her: his circumstances were described to her as ruinous; and in an evil hour, through the persuasion of interested friends, she became the wife of Sir James Dornton, a partner every way unsuitable for Some time after her marriage, Arlingford, by the death of his elder brother, succeeded to the title and estates of Lord Ormsby, but he found in them no consolation for the loss of Matilda. He returned to England, and accidentally met her, for the first time, at a dinner-party. It was a severe trial to both: but they were too conversant with the usage of the world to allow their feelings to be observed; and Matilda was still too virtuous not to use all the means in her power in order to suppress the recollections of her earliest affection. A vague consciousness that he was not utterly indifferent to her, notwithstanding the change in her situation, found admission to the breast of Ormsby, but he had as yet no desire to try it by any severer test, and retired to his seat in the country. At this part of the narrative the family of the Hobsons, related to Sir James, are introduced on the stage. These nouveaux riches are extremely tiresome; and though the caricature which the author draws of them is bold, and often amusing, yet we think that, upon the whole, it tends rather to deform than improve the picture. One feels oppressed with a sense of pain, in seeing these assuming persons intruding so often upon the repose of scenes, which, without their presence, would have produced only impressions of unqualified delight. With this disagreeable family it is Lady Matilda's fate to take a journey to the Continent. At Geneva she meets two of the beloved friends of her childhood in Lady Ormsby, the mother of Augustus, and in Emily, his sister. Here, too, unhappily for her peace, she encounters another of her early companions. But this meeting is too forcibly depicted to be given in any other words than those of the author. "It was not yet mid-day when an English travelling carriage, that seemed stained with the variation of each soil,' marking that its inmate had not lingered by the way, turned out of the main road down the lane which led to the campagne on the lake; and after a handsome head in travelling cap had several times been thrust through the window, as if making inquiries, the postillions finally stopped at the gate of Lady Ormsby's villa. The traveller jumped out, and was at the inner door before he was met by old Wilson the house-steward, who, after giving him a lengthened stare, exclaimed, "My Lord! well, to be sure-to think of your coming upon us all like a little impromptu, as I may say for in his residence abroad, Wilson too had acquired a little foreign garnish for his tongue. Then altering his tone he added, ‘But nothing's happened amiss, I hope?' "No, nothing at all, Wilson,' said Lord Ormsby, only that I got away sooner than I expected,--that's all. But where's my mother?" "Why, her ladyship is just stepped out for a little promenade, I believe, but if you will wait in here, I will fetch her myeslf.' To this Lord Ormsby consented, as he did not wish to have the family meeting under the restraint of a public walk-which was what he perhaps understood by Wilson's 'promenade.' He was left therefore to himself in the sitting room, which opened into the conservatory, “What a happy life,' thought he, as he first admired the room itself, and then the thousand little comforts with which its present mistress had adorned it. Never idle, either of them, I'm sure,' he continued, as his eye wandered among various symptoms of elegant occupation, and at last rested on the instrument-on the desk of which he was somewhat startled at recognising, in a well-known hand-writing, 'Matilda Delaval,' marked on the first leaf of his favourite ' Ombra adorata.' "Full well he recollected the night at Ormsby Castle when she had thus marked that paper, and which had at the time drawn from him a remark upon her thinking it necessary thus to appropriate that which she had every way identified with herself. "Could she then be thus near to him? Was it possible that on the very spot where he was then standing, she had been lately delighting his own family, with those tones to which he had never listened without rapture?—No, he persuaded himself that these were all vain illusions, the offspring of a heated imagination; and that a much more natural explanation was, that, like those little relics he had found at Ormsby, the music had formerly been left there, and that his sister had now been practising it.' "He had nearly convinced himself that this must be the case, when he accidentally took up from another table a sketch-book, with a pencil, whose touch he well knew, left between the leaves, at a half finished view from the very windows of the apartment where he was seated. There could be no mistake here. Her pencil was always left in the book.' This was apparently so trifling a circumstance, that none but a lover's recollection could have retained it as characteristic: but the view spoke for itself; and, as he took it to the window, and devoured · it with his eyes, she is then actually at Geneva,' exclaimed he. "That he was not more surprised at the discovery, was what he could not account for. He had never owned to himself that the possibility of such a chance had had the least effect in determining him upon this foreign expedition; whilst it was so very natural he should be desirous to see his mother and sister, that that reason alone was quite satisfactory to one never rigid in self-examination of the motives of every action to which he felt inclined. "Whilst still gazing on the sketch which he held in his hand, he was roused by a gentle tap at the farther window, by which the garden entrance passed which led through the conservatory into the room;—and turning round, he caught the last glimpse of a female form entering at the glass-door. Almost at the same moment, a well-known voice exclaimed, whilst passing the conservatory, 'My dear Emily, Sir James is gone to Chamouni, and I can stay;'-and the next moment Matilda stood in amazement before him. "That moment was one made up of the purest inspiration of feeling, and was as little amenable to the dictates of preconcerted prudence, as the effusions of gifted genius are to the dogmas of art. "Augustus!' escaped from her lips, in a tone which thrilled the heart's core of Ormsby, and created an oblivion of all things present and past, save only the delights of that happy time when it was familiar to him as a household word,' even from her lips. With her, too, the exclamation had arisen from a momentary self-oblivion. But instead of perpetuating, it caused it in an instant to pass away. Her feelings since her marriage had been so severely disciplined, and under such constant control, that with a single effort she recovered the appearance of composure. Not that the impression was transient,-that it bounded lightly off,--that it was no longer retained when no longer shown; but as a rock, if dashed on the i calm still lake before them, would with its first shock only cause outward agita- ! tion; and whilst it sunk deeper and deeper within, and was imbedded forever in the bosom of the waters, stillness would again have settled on their surface,--even |