his lines on Barbican and London Wall, may seem to the lover, by his associations, worthy henceforth of the Muse herself. Love, too, smooths practically a descent from palaces to all the circumstances of the lowest condition; it gives a relish to the coarsest fare, imparting a charm to the rudest substitutes required by the hardships of the common people, into whose language even it would turn sometimes all its thoughts. Love is thus a learned conjuror, and, with the glass of fancy, will do strange things.

"Such are his powers, whom time hath styled,
Now swift, now slow, now tame, now wild;
Now hot, now cold, now fierce, now mild;
The eldest born, yet still a child."

But it is on this road of the tombs that the effects of its magic seem the most wonderful, for it rivets us to an image of death ; it endears to us a cemetery; it reconciles even our very flesh to the grave. Hark the song beginning

"Love not! the thing you love may die."

O shallow poet! say rather "Love, that you may follow if it dies.” Let us mark for a moment its power, both as love frustrated, and as love, albeit in death, crowned with success.

"Love is a mystery," says a popular writer; "it distastes every thing but itself; its joys are a pleasant dream—a bewilderment of the senses; its pains an acute reality, scarcely and indeed sometimes not endurable; and therefore broken hearts are every year causing a death which is ascribed to other causes." O life! O world! cover me! let me be no more! to see that perfect mirror of pure innocence wherever I gazed and grew happy and good, shivered to dust! Why should not I walk hand in hand with death, to find my love out? Might our souls together climb to the height of their eternity, and there enjoy what earth denied us-happiness!

66

Though our bridal bed

Be not adorned with roses, 'twill be green;
We shall have virgin laurel, cypress, yew,
To make us garlands; though no pine do burn,
Our nuptial shall have torches, and our chamber
Shall be cut out of marble, where we'll sleep,
Free from all care for ever."

Such are the thoughts and agonies, only expressed in poetic language, that in their abuse cause even those tragedies which so frequently fall under the notice of the magistrates of our metropolis; such are the voices that are echoed here as each new

loved one passes; and how rapidly do they pass! Every one remembers what another poet cries,

"O death, all eloquent! you only prove

What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love."

"O happy day!" exclaims Petrarch, "when leaving the terrestrial prison I shall throw off the heavy perishable garment in which I have been wrapt, escape from the thick darkness, and rise to the cloudless space in which I shall behold my Lord and her whom I have loved. Each day it seems a thousand years since I began to walk by the side of my cherished guide, who has led me through the world, and now conducts me by a better road to a life exempt from pain. And the artifices of the world cannot retain me, for I know them; and so great is the light of love which shines within my heart and reaches heaven, that I fear no longer the menaces of that death which our King endured with cruel pangs, in order to make me firm and bold to imitate Him. Its image will no more trouble my serenity. Death cannot render the sweet face bitter, but the sweet face can give sweetness to death. To die well, what need of other aid? Besides, He assists me who teaches me all that is good. He who was not sparing of his blood, who with his feet burst the gates of Tartarus, comes to encourage me by the example of his death." Thus, when death parts two lovers, is the survivor armed and invincible. But again, circumstances cause love often to be frustrated, and young creatures to be left rapt in tender hoverings over a vanished bliss.

"For side by side, throughout our life,

Do love and sorrow move,

And flowerless and verdureless

The heart they will not prove

Though men take a kind of joy in their afflictions, when they come from those they love, and though invoking hope, they would wish to think it not quite in vain" to sigh out sonnets to the midnight air," insufficient are deemed to be all the subterfuges but one to which such disappointment looks forward. Death has no rival, for instance, in the consolation invoked by Virolet, when all he can ask for is to look and mourn. There is also the separation caused by some fault, perhaps involuntarily committed. Oh! then indeed is the anguish poignant, and past all remedy but what is brought by death. Then we hear sung, "The sunny side of life is gone,

Its shadows now are mine,

And thorns are springing in my heart,
Where blossoms used to twine.

Langford.

"I do not blame thee for my lot,
I only pray for thee,

That thou mayst from the tempter's power
(Oh, joyful thought!) be free;

That thou mayst bend above my grave
With penitence sincere,

And for the broken-hearted one

Let fall a pious tear.'

There is, in fine, the separation caused by the will of others— "the parting between two hearts with but one thought, two flowers with but one stem "-when we hear sung,

"I've press'd my last kiss on thy brow,
I've breath'd my last farewell,
And hush'd within my breaking heart
The love I may not tell.

I sought to win thee for mine own,
To wear thee in my heart;
That dream is o'er-I leave thee now,
And bless thee as we part.

"The cherish'd hopes of other days
Time never may restore;

But, dear one lost! I love thee still
As fondly as of yore.

Thy low, sweet tones are in my ear
Where'er my footsteps roam,

And pleasant memories of thee

Will make my heart their home.

"And when my bark, now passion-toss'd
Upon life's wintry sea,

Shall sink beneath the stormy wave,
Wilt thou not weep for me?"

Our old English dramatists recur often to such scenes; but never, perhaps, with more pathetic tenderness than where Valerio is represented catching at some vague hope of a reunion. He kneels and says,

"Heaven, be not angry, and I have some hope yet,
To whom I kneel; be merciful to me,

Look on my harmless youth, angels of pity,
And from my bleeding heart wipe off my sorrows!
The power, the pride, the malice, and injustice
Of cruel men are bent against mine innocence.
You that control their wills

And bow their stubborn arms, look on my weakness,
And when you please, and how, allay my miseries."

Without, it may be hoped, incurring any suspicion of paganism, one may say with Tibullus,

"Qui primus caram juveni, carumque puellæ
Eripuit juvenem, ferreus ille fuit."

"Did it happen to you," as Battus asks Milo in the Idyl, "to desire an absent person *? to desire with the earnestness of love one whom you have no hope of again seeing? Then you know what it is to feel the heart wither; then you know the wound that sweet music makes; then you know what it is to be deaf to the nightingale, blind to the loveliness of nature, dead to all but one poor ghost-like image, engrossing the fancy, and rendering all things present like a painful dream. In the volume of your sadness you may want those who can read, though you bear wounds upon you in wide and spacious characters; but an open force hath torn your sinews; you are past all the remedy of art or time, the flatteries of court, of fame, or honours."

"Thus in the summer a tall flourishing tree,
Transplanted by strong hand, with all her leaves
And blooming pride upon her, makes a show
Of spring, tempting the eye with wanton blossom;
But not the sun, with all his amorous smiles,
The dews of morning, or the tears of night,
Can root her fibres in the earth again,

Or make her bosom kind, to growth and bearing,

But the tree withers; and those very beams,

That once were natural warmth to her soft verdure,

Dry up her sap, and shoot a fever through

The bark and rind, till she becomes a burthen
To that which gave her life."

Men are such forest trees. When these removals are effected, you will never see them flourishing again. They are, for this life, past reviving. "What a fleet as well as fatal tragedy! All that had hitherto made life delightful, all the fine emotions, all the bright hopes, and the rare accomplishments of our nature, are dark delusions now-cruel mockeries. Why, what is life, they cry, that it can bring upon its swift wing such dark, such agonizing vicissitudes as these? It is not life t." Then do they discover what is at the bottom of human sorrow, and they know henceforth what it is to have death in scorn, so as even to take from choice the road on which it is most accustomed to pass; for

"O love! how potent hast thou been to teach
Strange journeyings!"

*Theoc.

+ Henrietta Temple.

Forced separation, removal to another place without a hope of return, the prohibition of others,-how many feel all this! how many know what it is to see the last look! They part, and yet there is no scene acted. Love in its brightest hours manufactures no elaborate airs. By some one merely sitting or walking quietly at another's side, saying little, and looking less, it secures its power. In its sorrows it coins nothing. So here, the one most tender is quite cheerful to all appearance. "How do people part? They say farewell. Then farewell-is that all? Yes. So you'll do no more than say farewell? It is enough as much good will may be conveyed in one word as in many*." O great painter of nature, how true to life is this! The face, perhaps, even is turned from you; the book is taken up again as if all the thoughts were in it, as if you were already gone, though poets say,

"Like trees wind-parted, that embrace anon,

True love so often goes before 'tis gone."

Well, with only another look you are gone; but this undisturbed, free manner was merely a thing put on to hide what was in the heart; for

"The most we love, when we the least express it,"

special inattention, as well as special attention, being often a symptom of deep love. So the parting is achieved in silence, or with careless voice. But what passes after it? Ah! she has a good cry, to use her own words, extorted later in a calmer moment. "How could I help it," she writes, " being a woman?" What passes on the morrow? Ah! how pale art thou who wast so bland and merry in our meadows! The secret explaining the change could be expressed in the lines

"Alas! will all this gush of feelings pass
Away in solitude? and must they wane
Like melodies upon a sandy plain,
Without an echo? Am I to be left
So sad, so melancholy, so bereft ?"

Calantha, in the tragedy of the Broken Heart, only gives utterance to what many in real life have felt, and do, perhaps, at this very moment feel. She says,

"Shrieks and outcries have an end, and such

As can find vent for all their sorrows

Thus, may live to court new pleasures

They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings.
Let me die smiling."

* Jane Eyre.