At last, the silence and suspense I could no long- Upon my mother's lonely grave, and sobbed my er bear, heart away; LITTELL'S LIVING AGE-No. 540.-23 AND 30 SEPT., 1854. PORTRAIT OF A CHIFFONNIER. Reader! as a Tail-piece to the volume, we have imported a portrait of a Parisian: a man about Town. This is not offered as a Fashion-Plate.-You might be able to copy his dressbut could you assume that nonchalance of attitude and manner, which can only be acquired by a long course of leisure and freedom from labor! THE SOUND OF THE UNKNOWN SEA. | And, opening the door, I stepped into the midnight air. 'Twas on a winter's evening, I was sitting by the fire, In idleness unwonted, but employment seemed to tire; Some mystic power had lulled my soul-in trance as deep and still As though enthralled by slumber, lay its living thought and will. When, suddenly, there came a knock, a feeble knock and low, Upon the door; which startled me, and made the life-blood flow Back to my heart, pause there awhile, then coursing round again Bring to the ears a rushing heat, and tingle in each vein. I felt as if, with that one spark, my own life's fire were spent, There lay a man, an old, old man-so old, you would have said Slowly revolving centuries had rolled above his head. I took him up into my arms, and bore him to my fire; But, as I laid him down, I saw its last faint spark expire. No other human being dwelt my lonely home within; I was a solitary man, who had nor kith nor kin; To seek for any creature's help, a league I must have gone I felt, that I was there to see the old man die alone. The anxious minutes passed away; I chafed his hands in vain, Until the pulses of the heart began to beat again, And, by the fitful moon, I saw his eyelids slowly rise, Spell-bound, I sat, awed by the look, the weirdlook of his eyes. Then, slowly lifting up his head, he lent a listening ear, As if some long expected voice, or sound, he strove to hear. The night was silent as the grave. But, sinking on the floor, He gasped, "I hear it louder swell, and nearer than before! But, in a while, I roused myself, and to the case-"I cannot die until I know the meaning of that sound; Death will not give me rest, until the answer has been found; Mightier than death, fuller than life, upon my ear it falls; Until I know what it may be, Oh, how that sound appals! "I heard it first, long years ago, when yet a child I lay Upon my mother's lonely grave, and sobbed my heart away; From the Examiner. Songs from the Dramatists. Edited by Robert On the other hand, some things will be found are simply gross, and Tom Killigrew's crude and artificial." here that might not have been anticipated. A few plays with nothing else in them worth preservation have supplied an excellent song; and It is a very serious amount of labor to which others that had long been consigned to oblivion Mr. Bell necessarily subjects himself when he by their dulness or depravity, have unexpectedundertakes the editing of a monthly volume ly thrown up an occasional stanza of permanent of our standard English poetry, with so much value. popular annotation as shall supply what is needed for a reasonable understanding of each poet by the multitude of readers. It is a labor too, that demands no trifling qualifications, natural and acquired; fine taste and matured habits of study, with love for the kind of work even in its least kindly aspect, as pure work, difficult and unremitting. The superiority in all qualities of sweetness, thoughtfulness, and purity of the writers of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century over their successors is strikingly exhibited in these productions. The dramatic songs of the age of Elizabeth and James I. are distinguished as much by their delicacy and chastity of feeling, as by their vigor and beauty. The change that took place under Charles II. was sudThe eighth of Mr. Bell's monthly volumes den and complete. With the Restoration, love is before us. We have never felt the editor disappears, and sensuousness takes its place.unequal to his task, but if any such feeling Voluptuous without taste or sentiment, the songs had existed, this volume of Songs from the of that period may be said to dissect in broad Dramatists would have sufficed for its complete daylight the life of the town, laying bare with reextinction. The conception of it belongs volting shamelessness the tissues of its most se cret vices. But as this species of morbid anawholly to Mr. Bell. The songs of our elder tomy required some variation to relieve its samedramatists have, with a few exceptions, re-ness, the song sometimes transported the libertinmained scattered about their works, and Mr. ism into the country, and through the medium Bell is the first editor who has acted upon the of a sort of Covent-garden pastoral exhibited the admirable idea of concentrating all their grace fashionable delinquencies in a masquerade of and quaintness into the form of a collection Strephons and Chlorises, no better than the which must have to every reader, more or less Courtalls and Loveits of the comedies. The costhe charm of a new volume of Standard lyrics. tume of innocence gave increased zest to the To carry out this idea thoroughly, it was worth dissolute wit, and the audiences seem to have while to examine the whole mass of our drabeen delighted with the representation of their matic literature down to the times of Wycher- verdant images, and the affectation of rural simown licentiousness in the transparent disguise of ly and Congreve, even to turn over dross in plicity. It helped them to a spurious ideal, which which the required gold might lie hidden, in rarely, however, lasted out to the end of the verse. the hope of finding, as Mr. Bell has sometimes The subsequent decline of the drama is sensibly found, a good song lost in a bad play. But felt in the degeneracy of its lyrics. The interval, let the editor, to whose skill and patience we from the end of the seventeenth century to the owe this most choice addition to our libraries, close of the eighteenth, presents a multitude of speak for himself:— songs, chiefly, however, in operas which do not come strictly within the plan of this volume; but, with a few solitary exceptions, they are trivial, monotonous, and conventional. The bril liant genius of Sheridan alone shines out with conspicuous lustre, and terminates the scries with a gaiety and freshness that may be regarded as a revival of the spirit with which it opens. The addition of a few songs from the plays of Sheridan-they occupy but three pages was prompted, we think, by an impulse of good taste. The close of the collection, however, corresponds naturally with the close of the seventeenth century. The labor which is not represented in the ensuing pages considerably exceeded the labor which has borne the fruit and flowers gathered into this little book. Many hundreds of plays have been examined without yielding any results, or such only as in their nature were unavailable. Some names will be missed from the catalogue of dramatic writers, and others will be found to contribute less than might be looked for from their celebrity; but in all such cases a satisfactory explanation can be given. Marlowe's plays, for example, do not contain a single song, and Greene's only one. Southerne abounds in songs, but they are furnished chiefly by other writers, It begins of course in the sixteenth. The and are of the most commonplace character. first songs in the collection are from the first Etherege has several broken snatches of drinking known English comedy, not "Gammer Gurrhymes and choruses dancing through his come-ton's Needle," but the play that has taken hisdies, full of riotous animal spirits soaring to the height of all manner of extravagance, and admirably suited to ventilate the profligacy of the day; but for the most part they are either unfit for extract from their coarseness, or have not substance enough to stand alone. Wycherley's songs torical precedence of that, " Ralph Roister Doister," by Nicholas Udall or Uvedale, a rodloving headmaster of Westminster three hundred years ago, whose career is sketched by Mr. Bell in a preliminary notice, by which, as |