ance.

of the footsteps of a genuine poet, of a man of true and fervid genius. The flowers and the fruits of poetry are scattered round in tropical profusion. Fitly, and with beautiful decision, the finest words fall into the aptest places. The structure of the verse follows the thoughts as their echo. We have pictures in abundance, and in many styles. A severe simplicity sets off the wealthiest exuberThe familiar and the lofty, the ideal and the homely, the comic and the tragic, run side by side, obedient to a master's hand. There is also character, nicely conceived, subtly drawn forth, and sustained with dramatic exactness. In short, there is hardly an element of first-rate poetry which is not contained in the Princess. Yet the question remains whether or not it is a great poem, and we fear the answer must be a negative. Mr. Tennyson has more than redeemed his reputation; has indeed materially advanced it; yet has failed to satisfy us. So exacting is a hearty admiration.

an omen for the future. Its glorious promise has yet to be fulfilled.

From a late London paper.

THE FRENCH FRIGATE "PSYCHE."-A NEW

SHELL.

WHILE the invasion question is so much agitated, the following description of a novel French frigate, and a new missile with which she is armed, will be read with interest; it is from the Lisbon correspondent of the Times:

"As much has been said at home of the wonderful capabilities of a French ship of war now in the Tagus, called the Psyche, commanded by Count Gourdon, I am glad to say that I have had an opportunity of discussing with persons wellinformed on such subjects, who inspected her, the peculiarities of her construction and armament. The Psyche is not a steamer, as has been erroneously stated; she is simply a smart frigate of 40 We take the philosophy of his work to be thor- guns, as well manned and as well appointed as oughly sound, and not so superfluous as it may any vessel of the same class in the British navy. seem to some. Several very thoughtful and subtle Though rated a 40-gun ship, she carries but 30; but questions are opened up in it; many truths evolved these are of tremendous weight; the 22 on the that profoundly affect us in our human relations; main being all 84, and the eight on the upper deck many that concern not a little those social ills to being 32-pounders. These guns can be used inwhich it supremely behoves the poet to apply his differently for shell, round shot, or grape; but healing art, his "medicinal gums." The idea, they are exclusively devoted in the Psyche for extoo, is thoroughly original. Mr. Tennyson's periments on a concussion shell, which being a relearned ladies have no affinity to the savantes or cent Gallic invention, is exclusively employed in the precieuses. The matter involved is altogether the French service. The shell in question has no different. Few will be disposed to laugh at Lady fuse, and it is perfectly harmless; it passes a cerIda; rather, all will be ready with allegiance. tain distance through the air, with a certain degree Various and abundant as Mr. Tennyson's raptures of velocity. It ignites by concussion, and not by have been in honor of the Claribels, and Lilians, percussion; and its chief destination and operaand Isabels, and Madelines, and Adelines, and Eleanores-glorious as his dreams of fair women always are this poem in that respect surpasses all, and "outdoes his former outdoings." The ladies should vote him a testimonial. We, men, look poor beside them in the Princess. The college fails but for a greater triumph, and the palace of love that springs up in its place has far fairer and more beautiful proportions.

Still we say, what the poem contains is greater than the poem itself. Why should Mr. Tennyson have thrown all this into a medley? He had something serious to say-why graft it on burlesque? Some modesty there may be, but there is also some sense of weakness; and neither, in Mr. Tennyson, were called for. Eminently, in the manliness of his thoughts, in the largeness of his view, and in his power of clothing the familiar in our human passions and affections "with golden exhalations of the dawn," he is worthy to be the poet of our time. Why does he not assume his mission? Why does he discredit it with trifling and with puerilities unworthy of him? The "set" for whom he too much writes at present, are not the world for whom he should be writing. In the Princess we have more decisive evidence of his powers for a sustained and solid exercise of poetry than has heretofore been given. But it is yet only

tion is that of lodging in the matter aimed at, and of setting fire to it-though it should pierce the object, it will produce all the effects of an ordinary shell as it explodes. It is harmless until it gains a certain velocity, and it may be rolled on the floor or dropped from the upper to the lower deck without the least injury, and, even if it be broken in the fall, no mischief will ensue. The shell was invented by Captain Billette, of the French naval service, and it was actively used in 1844, at Mogador, with such terrific certainty that wherever it fell the town was instantly on fire. Persons in the habit of using it say that half-a-dozen lodging in the Howe, the Queen, or the Albion, would set the ship in a blaze the moment they struck the side, as each burrows in the wood, tears up all about it, and ignites everything with which each morsel of the contents comes in contact. There are neither mortars nor howitzers on board the Psyche; all her guns are fitted in the ordinary manner, as the shell to be effective requires no more elevation of the gun from whence it is discharged than an ordinary round shot.

"The vast superiority of a frigate having all her main-deck guns 84-pounders, and firing 10-inch shells from each, is evident, but the admirers of the Psyche will not rest there, as they assert that she is more than a match for a line-of-battle ship.

When we shall see a British 60 or 80-gun ship | of Helvellyn and Skiddaw, and of the blue waters allowing a French frigate to get within range of Derwent and Windermere. without blowing her out of the water, we may be The Cockney school was, if possible, a misnomer alarmed at the so much vaunted power of the more absurd—striving, as it did, in vain to include, Psyche. Still it is well to know that a French within one term, three spirits so essentially distinct frigate, rated at 40 guns, carries no less than twen- as Hazlitt, Keats, and Leigh Hunt-the first a ty-two 84-pounders on her main-deck, and eight stern metaphysician, who had fallen into a hopeless 32-pounders on her quarter-deck, and that half a passion for poetry; the second, the purest specidozen shot from them well placed are calculated men of the ideal- -a ball of beautiful foam, "cut to play destruction with an enemy of superior off from the water," and not adopted by the air; force, who does not commence by disabling her. the third, a fine tricksy medium between the poet Captain Billette, the inventor of the shell, died a and the wit, half a sylph and half an Ariel, now few weeks since in the naval hospital at Paris. hovering round a lady's curl, and now stirring the The secret of the new shell is known only to the fiery tresses of the sun-a fairy fluctuating link, proper department of the government; the officers connecting Pope with Shelley. We need not be on board are unacquainted with it. All they know at pains to cut out into little stars the Blackwood is that such articles are served out with other constellation, or dwell on the differences between munitions of war, and that when they have wit-a Wilson, a Lockhart, and a James Hogg. nessed the operation of the shell, the result has invariably been the same."

From Tait's Magazine.

MRS. SHELLEY.-BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

One school, however, there has appeared within the last fifty years, answering to all the characteristics we have enumerated, namely, the Godwin school, who, by a common master-the old man eloquent himself-a common philosophical as well as poetical belief, common training, that of warfare with society, and many specific resemblances in manner and style, are proclaimed to be one. This cluster includes the names of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecroft, Brockden Brown of America, Shelley, and Mrs. Shelley.

Old Godwin scarcely got justice in this magazine from Mr. De Quincey. Slow, cumbrous, elephantine as he was, there was always a fine spirit aniHe was

MUCH as we hear of schools of authors, there has, properly speaking, been but one in British literature at least, within this century. There was never, for example, any such thing as a Lake school. A school supposes certain conditions and circumstances which are not to be found among the poets referred to. It supposes, first of all, a common master. Now, the Lake poets had no common master, either among themselves or others. They mating his most lumpish movements. owned allegiance neither to Shakspeare, nor Mil-never contemptible-often common-place, indeed, ton, nor Wordsworth. Each stood near, but each but often great. There was much in him of the stood alone, like the stars composing one of the German cast of mind—the same painful and plodconstellations. A school, again, implies a common ding diligence, added to high imaginative qualities. creed. But we have no evidence, external or in- His great merit at the time—and his great error, ternal, that, though the poetical diction of the as it proved afterwards-lay in wedding a partiai lakers bore a certain resemblance, their poet-philosophic system with the universal truth of ficical creed was identical. Indeed, we are yet to tion. Hence the element which made the public learn that Southey had, of any depth or definitude, drunk with his merits at first, rendered them obliva poetical creed at all. A school, again, supposes ious afterwards. So dangerous it is to connect a similar mode of training. But how different the fiction (the finer alias of truth) with any dogma or erratic education of Coleridge, from the slow, mythus less perishable than the theogony of Homer, solemn, silent degrees by which, without noise of or the Catholicism of Cervantes. After all, what hammer or edge-tool, arose, like the ancient tem- was the theory of Godwin, but the masque of ple, the majestic structure of Wordsworth's mind! Christianity? Cloaking the leading principle of A school, besides, implies such strong and striking our religion, its disinterested benevolence, under resemblance as shall serve to overpower the specific a copy of the features of Helvetius and Volney, differences between the writers who compose it. he went a mumming with it in the train of the But we are mistaken if the dissimilarities between philosophers of the revolution. But when he apWordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey be not as proached the domain of actual life and of the hugreat as the points in which they agree. Take, man affections, the ugly disguise dropped, and his for example, the one quality of speculative intellect. fictions we hesitate not to characterize as among That, in the mind of Coleridge, was restless, dis-the noblest illustrations of the Sermon on the contented, and daring-in Wordsworth, still, col-Mount. But to the public they seemed the reiterlected, brooding perpetually over narrow but pro-ations of exploded and dangerous errors-such a found depths-in Southey, almost totally quiescent. load of prejudice and prepossession had been susThe term Lake school, in short, applied at first in derision, has been retained, principally because it is convenient-nay, suggests a pleasing image, and gives both the public and the critics "glimpses, that do make them less forlorn," of the blue peaks

pended to their author's skirts. And now, the excitement of danger and disgust having passed away from his theories, interest in the works which propounded them has also subsided. "Caleb Williams," once characterized by Hannah More as a

cunning and popular preparation of the poison | way to the scaffold, and wished for a pen to 66 rewhich the Political Justice had contained in a cruder cord the strange thoughts that were arising in her form, and thereby branded as dangerous, is now mind." Peace to her ashes! How consoling to forgotten, we suspect, by all but a very select think that those who in life were restless and unclass of circulating library readers. "St. Leon," happy, sleep the sleep of death as soundly as oth"Fleetwood," "Mandeville," and "Clondesley," ers-nay, seem to sleep more soundly-to be with all their varied merits, never attracted atten- hushed by a softer lullaby, and surrounded by a tion, except through the reflex interest and terror profounder peace, than the ordinary tenants of the excited by their author's former works. Thus grave. Yes, sweeter, deeper, and longer is the political excitement has been at once a raising and repose of the truant child, after his day of wana ruining influence to the writings of a great Eng-dering is over, and the night of his rest is come. lish author-ruining, we mean, at present-for Another "Wanderer o'er Eternity" was Brockthe shade of neglect has yet to be created which den Brown, the Godwin of America. And worse can permanently conceal their sterling and imper- for him, he was a wanderer, not from, but among ishable worth. After the majority of the writings men. For Cain of old, it was a relief to go forth of Dickens have perished-after one half of Bul- from his species into the virgin empty earth. The wer's, and one fourth of Scott's novels have been builders of the Tower of Babel must have rejoiced forgotten-shall many reflective spirits be found as they saw the summit of their abortive building following the fugitive steps of Caleb Williams, or sinking down in the level plain; they fled from it standing by the grave of Marguerite de Damville, as a stony silent satire on their baffled ambition, or sympathizing with the gloom of Mandeville, or and as a memorial of the confusion of their speech of Bethlem Gabor, as they do well to be angry-it scourged them forth into the wilderness, where even unto death. If sincerity, simplicity, depth they found peace and oblivion. A self-exiled Byron of thought, purity of sentiment, and power of or Landor is rather to be envied; for though genius can secure immortality to any productions," how can your wanderer escape from his own it is to the fictions of Godwin. shadow?" yet it is much if that shadow sweep Mary Wollstonecroft-since we saw her coun- forests and cataracts, fall large at morning or eventenance prefixed to her husband's memoir-a face ing upon Alps and Apennines, or swell into the so sweet, so spiritual, so far withdrawn from earth-Demon of the Brockan. In this case misery takes ly thoughts, steeped in an enthusiasm so genuine a prouder, loftier shape, and mounts a burning -we have ceased to wonder at the passionate at- throne. But a man like Brockden Brown, forced tachment of Southey, Fuseli, and Godwin to the to carry his incommunicable sorrow into the press gifted being who bore it. It is the most feminine and thick of human society, nay, to coin it into countenance we ever saw in picture. The "Rights the means of procuring daily bread, he is the true of Women" seem in it melted down into one de- hero, even though he should fall in the struggle. liquium of love. Fuseli once, when asked if he To carry one's misery to market, and sell it to the believed in the immortality of the soul, replied in highest bidder, what a necessity for a proud and language rather too rough to be quoted verbatim, sensitive spirit! Assuredly Brown was a brave "I don't know if you have a soul, but I am sure struggler, if not a successful one. Amid poverty, that I have." We are certain that he believed in neglect, non-appreciation, hard labor, and the thouthe existence of at least one other immortal spirit—sand nïaiseries of the crude country which America that of the owner of the still, serene, and rapt then was, he retained his integrity; he wrote on countenance on which he hopelessly doted. It is at what Godwin calls his " story books;" he curious that on the first meeting of Godwin and his sought inspiration from his own gloomy woods and future wife, they "inter-despised"-they recoiled silent fields; and his works appear, amid what are from each other, like two enemies suddenly meet-called "standard novels," like tall wind-swept ing on the street, and it required much after-inter-American pines amid shrubbery and brushwood. course to reconcile them, and ultimately to create His name, after his untimely death, (at the age of that passion which led to their union.

thirty-nine,) was returned upon his ungrateful Mary Wollstonecroft shone most in conversation. country-from Britain, where his writings first From this to composition she seemed to descend as attained eminent distinction, while even yet Amerfrom a throne. Coleridge describes her meeting icans, generally, prefer the adventure and bustle and extinguishing some of Godwin's objections to of Cooper to the stern Dante-like simplicity, the her arguments with a light, easy, playful air. Her philosophical spirit, and the harrowing and ghostfan was a very falchion in debate. Her works-like interest of Brown.

"History of the French Revolution,' ""Wanderer Of Shelley, having spoken so often, what more of Norway," "Rights of Women," &c.-have all can we say? He seems to us as though the most perished. Her own career was chequered and beautiful of beings had been struck blind. Mr. unhappy-her end was premature-she died in De Quincey, in unconscious plagiarism from anchildbed of Mrs. Shelley, (like the sun going down other, compares him to a "lunatic angel." But to reveal the evening star;) but her name shall perhaps his disease might be better denominated live as that of a deep, majestical and high-souled blindness. It was not because he saw falsely, but, woman—the Madame Roland of England—and as if seeing and delaying to worship the glory of who could, as well as she, have paused on her Christ and his religion, that delay was punished

be the bride, of genius. Was she ever, like Mirza, overheard in her soliloquies, and did she bear the shame, accordingly, in blushes which still rekindle at the recollection? Did the rude fishermen of the place deem her wondrous wise, or did they deem her mad, with her wandering eye, her rapt

by a swift and sudden darkness. Imagine the the shore, clean, as if washed by the near seaApollo Belvedere, animated and fleshed, all his sandy hillocks rising behind—and westward, the dream-like loveliness of form retained, but his eyes river, like an inland lake, stretching around Dunremaining shut! Thus blind and beautiful stood dee, with its fine harbor and its surmounting Law, Shelley on his pedestal, or went wandering, an which, in its turn, is surmounted by the far blue inspired sleep-walker, among his fellows, who, shapes of the gigantic Stuicknachroan and Benalas, not seeing his melancholy plight, struck and voirlich. Did the bay of Spezia ever suggest to spurned, instead of gently and soothingly trying to Mrs. Shelley's mind the features of the Scottish lead him into the right path. We still think, not-scene? That scene, seen so often, seldom fails to withstanding Mr. De Quincey's eloquent strictures bring before us her image-the child, and soon to in reply, that if pity and kind-hearted expostulation had been employed, they might have had the effect, if not of weaning him from his errors, at least of modifying his expressions and feelings-if not of opening his eyes, at least of rendering him more patient and hopeful under his eclipse. What but a partial clouding of his mind could have prompted and gleaming countenance, her light step moving such a question as he asked upon the following to the music of her maiden meditation? occasion? Haydon, the painter, met him once at a large dinner party in London. During the course of the entertainment, a thin, cracked, shrieking voice was heard from the one end of the table, "You don't believe, do you, Mr. Haydon, in that execrable thing, Christianity?" The voice was poor Shelley's, who could not be at rest with any new acquaintance till he ascertained his impressions on that one topic.

The smooth sand retains no trace of her young feetto the present race she is altogether unknown; but we have more than once seen the man, and the lover of genius, turn round and look at the spot, with warmer interest, and with brightening eye, as we told them that she had been there.

We have spoken of Mrs. Shelley's similarity in genius to her husband—we by no means think her his equal. She has not his subtlety, swiftness, Poets, perhaps all men, best understand them- wealth of imagination, and is never caught up selves. Thus no word so true has been spoken of (like Ezekiel by his lock of hair) into the same Shelley, as where he says of himself, that "an ad-rushing whirlwind of inspiration. She has much, amantine veil was built up between his mind and however, of his imaginative and of his speculative heart." His intellect led him in one direction-qualities-her tendency, like his, is to the romanthe true impulses of his heart in another. The tic, the ethereal, and the terrible. The tie detainone was with Spinoza-the other with John. The ing her, as well as him, to the earth, is slendercontroversy raged between them like fire, and even her protest against society is his, copied out in a at death was not decided. We rejoice, in contrast fine female hand-her style is carefully and suc with the brutal treatment he met with while living, cessfully inodelled upon his she bears, in brief, to notice the tenderness which the most evangelical to him, the resemblance which Laone did to Laon, periodicals (witness the present number of the North which Astarte did to Manfred. Perhaps, indeed, British Review) extend to the memory of this most intercourse with a being so peculiar, that those sincere, spiritual, and unearthly of modern men. who came in contact with, either withdrew from It is to us a proud reflection, that for at least him in hatred, or fell into the current of his being; seventeen years our opinion of him has remained vanquished and enthralled, has somewhat affected unaltered. the originality, and narrowed the extent of her own genius. Indian widows used to fling themselves upon the funeral pyre of their husbands: she has thrown upon that of hers her mode of thought, her mould of style, her creed, her heart, her all. Her admiration of Shelley was, and is, an idolatry. Can we wonder at it? Separated from him in the prime of life, with all his faculties in the finest bloom of promise, with peace beginning to build in the crevices of his torn heart, and with fame hovering ere it stooped upon his head— separated, too, in circumstances so sudden and cruel-can we be astonished that from the wounds of love came forth the blood of worship and sacrifice? Wordsworth speaks of himself as feeling for

It is not at all to be wondered at, that two such spirits as Shelley and Mary Godwin, when they met, should become instantly attached. On his own doctrine of a state of preëxistence, we might say that the marriage had been determined long before, while yet the souls were waiting in the great antenatal antechamber! They met at last, like two drops of water-like two flames of fire like two beautiful clouds which have crossed the moon, the sky and all its stars, to hold their midnight assignation over a favorite and lonely river. Mary Godwin was an enthusiast from her childhood. She passed, by her own account, part of her youth at Broughty Ferry, in sweet and sinless reverie, among its cliffs. The place is, to us, familiar. It possesses some fine features-a bold promontory crowned with an ancient castle jutting far out the Tay, which here broadens into an arm of the ocean -a beach, in part smooth with sand, and in part paved with pebbles-cottages lying artlessly along

"The Old Sea some reverential fear." But in the mind of “Mary” there must lurk a feeling of a still stronger kind toward that element which he, next to herself, had of all things most passionately loved-which he trusted as a parent