Thou gav'st me that the poor do give the poor, Who changed not with the gloom of varying years, And blunted Slanders dart with their indignant scorn. For they who credit crime are they who feel Memory, not judgment, prompts the thoughts which steal And tales of broken truth are still believed Most readily by those who have themselves deceived. -We would advise our readers to learn by heart the last verse; happy he who, in the course of his life, has had no occasion to quote them, in reply to unmerited slander. Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan was, at the age of nineteen, united to the Hon. George Chapple Norton, brother to Lord Grantley, three years after she had first rejected him. Fortunate would it have been for her had she persisted in that rejection, for from the union has proceeded the troubles of her life. The lady is living, and, in delicacy, the biographer abstains from detailing the suspicions and persecutions to which she has been subjected. Suffice it that even he who instigated them has lived, it is said, to repent them; and the world, the harsh, censorious world, has owned its injustice. Had Mrs. Norton not appeared as a poetess in early life, that charming line, which has been consecrated to all followers of the muse, might have been applied to her— They learn in suffering what they teach in song. -But, in truth, poetry seemed to be the necessity of her earliest being. As a child, despite the vigilance of her mother, who disapproved of such a pursuit, she indulged her love of versification, and, when pen, ink, and paper were denied to her, she scribbled with a pencil verses in her music book. When quite a child, her love of authorship was gratified by the publication of a little satire, "The Dandies' Rout," with illustrations, the designs for which she executed herself. In her seventeenth year, she composed the poem, the "Sorrows of Rosalie;" but it was not published until after her marriage. Some three years elapsed, when the world was fairly astonished by the publication of "The Undying One," a poem founded on that fertile subject to the literateur, the legend of the Wandering Jew. The story, however, bore no resemblance to that startling production the "St. Leon" of Godwin, or to that wonderful complication "Le Juif Errant" of Eugene Sue. Equally powerfully written and conceived, the "Undying One" attained immense popularity, and Mrs. Norton was by common consent advanced to the front rank of living poets. In an elaborate criticism, the Quarterly Review said of her "This lady is the Byron of our modern poetesses. She has very much of that intense personal passion by which Byron's poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper communion with man and nature of Wordsworth. She has also Byron's beautiful intervals of tenderness, his strong, practical thought, and his forceful expression. It is not an artificial imitation, but a natural parallel." If, in power, Mrs. Norton resembles the poet of Newstead Abbey, she has not his mocking spirit; she ever seems to aspire after the good and the beautiful. She has his freedom of expression, an approach to his boldness and truthfulness of imagery, his strange power of control over, and use of, the simplest words to convey the loftiest meaning, and something of his pathos. She is wanting in his dramatic spirit. She shines rather in the reflective than the descriptive. She has something of Mrs. Hemans' love of the beautiful, intense religious feeling, and delicate softness of tone; and something of the impassioned plaintiveness of that most gifted of female poets, Elizabeth Letitia Landon. We almost regret we have not joined these two ladies in our notice: there is something strangely similar, and yet widely different in their histories. Both subjected to unmerited slanders, both unhappy in the unions they formed, both sadly serious and impassioned in their writings, the very points at which the circles of their lives join, serve but to illustrate more forcibly the lines of divergence. What in Miss Landon is earnestness, in Mrs. Norton is sincerity. E. L. L., was naturally of a light-hearted temperament, and those who knew her best wondered most at the deep melancholy that pervaded almost all her poems. Neither did she appear to be possessed of very deep feelings, but her writings are profoundly impassioned. In pathos, abandon, facility of description and delicacy of imagery she excels Mrs. Norton, but the latter takes the palm in sincerity or truthfulness, in the depth of a calm, chastened, beautiful repose. The one appeals to the passions, the senses, the emotions, the other to the reflective faculties. The harp of each is attuned to rare sweetness; but the chords of the one are wild, plaintive, or desolate ; of the other, measured and subdued. Miss Landon herself told the impulses that guided her. If that I know myself what keys "to suffer But Mrs. Norton's idea of woman's mission is the grand one and be strong." She tells it sweetly when she compares woman's endurance with man's. Warriors and statesmen have their meed of praise, And what they do, or suffer, men record; But the long sacrifice of woman's days Passes without a thought, without a word; And many a lofty struggle for the sake Of duties sternly, faithfully fulfill'd— For which the anxious mind must watch and wake, Goes by unheeded as the summer wind, And leaves no memory and no trace behind! Yet it may be, more lofty courage dwells In one meek heart which braves an adverse fate, Than his whose ardent soul indignant swells Warm'd by the flight, or cheer'd through high debate: Alone to suffer, and alone to strive? In 1840 Mrs. Norton published "The Dream, and other Poems," and quite lately, her last work, "The Lady of La Garaye." She also wrote a novel, "Stuart of Dunleath," of which, as it comes without the range of the present paper, we will only say that, apart from the faults incidental to a first effort in this branch of literature, it possesses rare excellence. Quite lately she has published another novel, which we passingly reviewed in a late number. We have already quoted from one or two of her fragmentary poems, of which she has written in the periodicals, and as songs, a large number. Next to the lines to the Duchess of Sutherland. the well-known "Arab's address to his steed" is, perhaps, the best. From the "Undying One" we could extract a whole host of gems, but the poem is well-known, and we prefer to select for more particular notice her latest effort "The Lady of La Garaye," which probably is less familiar to our readers. Somewhat irregularly written, the Lady of Garaye possesses passages of singular beauty, whilst the story itself is attractive from its plaintive simplicity. It is founded on truth, or perhaps we should more correctly say that it is a strictly accurate history of what really took place in real life. Claude Toussaint Count de la Garaye was a brilliantly handsome and accomplished young nobleman in the reign of Louis XV. He distinguished himself as a soldier and earned the favor of his Sovereign. He married Madmoiselle de la Motte Picquet, a young lady whose beauty has been handed down by an authentic picture preserved in one of the Religious Houses in Britainy. An engraving of it appears as a frontispiece to the poem. No description could do justice to the sad yet intellectual type of beauty it depicts The Lady of La Garaye retired with her husband to their Chateau in Brittany, where they passed a few months of unmingled happiness. But a change was at hand. One day when out hunting, the Lady was thrown from her horse, and was carried home in an apparently dying condition. She recovered, but was left an incurable cripple, and helpless invalid for life. Then came a period of misery, during which she doubted all the assurances of her Claude that her changed appearance had not changed his love. His deprecations of her doubts are among the finest passages of the poem. He tells her :— Age would have wrought thy wondrous beauty's doom A little sooner, darling take it so. "Oh! dearer now than when thy girlish tongue If bride of Death-being first my chosen bride- And God, He knows, who reads all human thought, I would lie low, and thou once more be lifted To walk in beauty as thou didst before, Oh! loved even to the brim of love's full fount, It (Since all we thought of, in our youth's bright May, That this is not our home; and make us turn A holy man arrives at La Garaye, and gradually his exhortations bring the lady to a better frame of mind. The exercise of charity becomes the labour of love, in which her husband aids her. The Chateau is turned into an Hospital for Incurables, and together they tend the helpless inmates. He acquires some skill as a doctor, and leaves the whole of his fortune to maintain the institution he founded. The tale, as we have said, is strictly true. The gay Count de la Garaye became an experienced physician, and received a reward from his Sovereign of 50,000 livres for new discoveries in the science of healing. The whole nation honored him, and his death was felt as a public calamity. Such are the materials of the exquisite little poem Mrs. Norton has produced. We would gladly quote largely from it; but the inexorable limits set by the publisher warn us against the attempt. We cannot resist giving one passage which describes the Lady of La Garaye's feelings when first the Doctor tells her she is hopelessly invalided for life. Crooked and sick for ever she must be: Her life of wild activity and glee Was with the past, the future was a life prayers, As though her babe's blue eyes turned earth to heaven! And VOL. I.-No. 8. 2D So, when she heard the grave physician speak, With a meek cheerfulness that conquered pain, Tell her blank years must waste in that changed home, Let infinite torture be her daily guest, But set a term beyond which shall be rest. In vain! She sees that trembling fountain rise, The doom that sounds to her like funeral bells. Then dropped her head, and wildly moaned and wept; We will conclude with another passage from the same which she again expresses her abhorrence of the slanderer. line poem, in The one "The myriad echoes lost among life's hills," is an exquisite gem suggestive of a whole volume of poetry. What hath the Slandered done, who vainly strives се |