great credit for having withdrawn so fewes us that political movements which of the "Landwehrmen," that is, those give rise to practical military ideas are not belonging to the reserve, from their always successful. This was the case daily occupations-an evident quibble, with the French revolution, and still which, however, deceived many. more so with the Prussian national risThe Prussian Chamber, after the brill- ing in 1813. The reröganization of the iant successes of the Prussian arms, Prussian army has in this respect been seems to be unwilling to look too closely timely, as it is contemporaneous with a into the condition of the army by which great political movement in Germany. they were achieved; and the public feel- But will the latter owe any of its success ing in the country certainly does not to the former? We doubt it, for the encourage any opposition to the Govern- national aspirations of Germany are still ment on this point. At the same time it progressive, while the reörganization of is evident that the Prussian army, if the the army in Prussia has assumed a retropresent system is maintained, must grad-grade aspect. Let us at least hope that, ually lose that national character which if it brings no other advantage, it will is its chief glory, and which it so emi- direct the efforts of free nations to the nently possessed in 1813. History teach- imitation of the excellent system of 1813.

Fraser's Magazine.

THE BRIDAL SONG OF HELEN.

A TRANSLATION FROM THE EIGHTEENTH IDYL OF THEOCRITUS.

BY SIR EDMUND HEAD.

Εν ποκ' άρα Σπάρτα ξανθότριχι πὰρ Μενελάῳ, κ. τ. λ.

WHERE fair-hair'd Menelaus dwelt, great Atreus' younger son,
And Helen to his home was borne, long lov'd, now woo'd and won,
Twelve damsels stood-the hyacinth gleam'd in their braided hair-
First of the land, Laconia's boast, a marvel bright and fair-
And wove with twinkling feet the dance, and all in concert sung,
As the bridal bower on Helen clos'd, and the hall around them rung.
"What! gentle bridegroom! gone so soon? To slumber art thou fled
In drowsy mood, or tir`d and faint, or wine hath touch'd thy head?
Thus early wilt thou sleep, at least thou shouldst have left the maid,
That here we girls as comrades all till morning might have play'd
Beneath her loving mother's eye; for well we know for life,
From year to year, from night to morn, she ever is thy wife.
With happy omen didst thou come; well hath thy wooing sped:
Thou first among e'en Sparta's chiefs! Jove's daughter shares thy bed.
Bless'd were the child that should repeat that mother's form and face-
No maid that treads the ground of Greece can vie with Helen's grace.
We know it--all of equal age, we've bar'd in girlhood's pride
Our supple limbs in manly sport along Eurotas' side--
Full four times sixty Spartan maids in pastime gather'd here-
And midst us all--we know it well-there is not Helen's peer.
The glow of dawn, the burst of spring, the majesty of night-
They all are fair, but fair as they, she shines in golden light.
As the tall cypress rears its spire and marks its place afar,
Some garden's pride-as the fleet steed adorns the victor's car,
So, Lacedæmon's pride and joy, we see young Helen move,
And scatter from her blushing brow the rosy light of love.
No hand like hers can reel the wool, or weave without a seam,
With shuttle deft so close a web cut from the loom's tall beam.
Aye! and to sweep the sounding lyre and sing high themes like this-
Broad-breasted Pallas, and the might of Orthian Artemis-
No hand, no voice like Helen's is; yet in her eyes the while
All woman's softest witchery beams, and sparkles in her smile.

In tranquil grace and beauty now a matron in thy home
Thou sitt'st; but we, when spring-time comes, as girls again will roam.
Again we'll course along the meads, and when our flowers we twine,
Like lambs that for their mothers bleat, shall we for Helen pine.
Then first for thee of melilot we'd weave the votive wreath,
And hang it up in Helen's name yon giant plane beneath.

For thee from out the silver urn, where those broad branches spread,
We'll draw our fragrant store, and there the liquid perfume shed.
On the smooth bark we'll grave the words, that passers-by may see,
In Doric phrase "Oh! harm me not-for I am Helen's tree."
Hail to the hero and his bride!—And may Latona shower
(Fair offspring is Latona's gift) her blessings on your bower.
May she too in her might divine-the Cyprian Goddess - give
That Love's pure flame in both your breasts with equal ardor live.
And Jove-great Jove-may he for aye with wealth and honor grace
Sons after sires of noblest blood-your children's children's race.
Sleep, breathing confidence and joy! sleep on till day appear!
Forget not though to wake at dawn: at dawn will we be here,
When the first feather'd songster's voice shall call us from our res .
Till then farewell! in Hymen's name be this fair wedding bless 'dt

more than he loved her; having engaged her affections, he conceived it a point of honor to become her husband. Being under age, they were "married in Scotland" but his father, although disapproving the match, had them subsequently remarried by license. She was the mother of Maria, and many circumstances lead to the conclusion that if she lacked some of the attractions the young and gay Irishman looked for, she was thoroughly amiable, prudent and good. A son, he tells us, was born at Black-Bourton, in 1764, and there also Maria was born in 1767. In 1768 Mr. Edgeworth records that he visited Ireland taking his son with him, leaving his wife and infant daughter in England.

beth, who thus became his third wife, on Christmas Day, 1780, at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn. In 1798, being again a widower, he again married-Miss Frances Anne Beaufort, the daughter of Dr. Beaufort, "an excellent clergyman, and a man of taste and literature." That admirable woman survived him many years. She was, Mr. Edgeworth writes, "a young lady of small fortune and large accomplishments;" and "his marriage with her," Maria, writing twenty years afterwards, says, "of all the blessings we owe to him, has proved the greatest.”

In 1814 time was telling on the vigorous frame of Mr. Edgeworth. In one of his conversations with his daughter, he spoke of the later years of his life as by far the happiest, and pleasantly said that "if he were permitted to return to earth in whatever form he might choose, he should perhaps make the whimsical choice of reëntering the world as an old man. His latest letter-to Lady Romilly, in 1817, when he knew he was dying, in the midst of physical suffering, resigned and cheerful-contains this passage: "I enjoy the charms of literature, the sym

At Black-Bourton, then, Maria Edgeworth was born, in 1767; she was the daughter of an English lady, and the granddaughter of an English lady; moreover, her father was of English birth and English descent, and she was English born. Nevertheless she was, to all intents and purposes, Irish: so she must be considered, and so she considered herself. She was born on the 1st of January (as she tells Mrs. Hall in one of her let-pathy of friendship, and the unbounded ters) a God-given "New-Year's gift" to her almost boy-father, and to the world for all time.

Mr. Edgeworth has not recorded the date of his first wife's death, but on the 17th of July, 1773, he was again wedded, at Lichfield, to Miss Honora Sneyd. Soon afterwards they settled in Ireland, and Edgeworthstown became, with few brief intervals, thenceforward his permanent home. His second wife did not live long, but her husband bears testimony to her many virtues. Some time after her death he married her sister Eliza

*Of his father Mr. Edgeworth says, he was "upright, honorable, sincere, and sweet-tempered; loved and respected by people of all ranks with

whom he was connected." He was in the Irish

parliament for twenty-five years. The Abbé Edgeworth was a relative, though not a near one; he was descended from a branch of the Edgeworth family. Mr. Edgeworth, soon after the restoration of Louis XVI., addressed the mimister of the king, claiming, as the nearest relative of the Abbé Edgeworth, from the justice of France that his name should be inscribed on some public monument with those of the exalted personages who

แ

relied for consolation on his fidelity and courage,

to show that monarchs may have friends, and that princes can be grateful."

gratitude of my children." His prayer
had been that as long as he lived he might
retain his intellectual faculties, and that
blessing was mercifully granted to him.
He thanked God that his mind did not
die before his body. On the 13th of June,
1817, he died, and his remains were de-
posited in the family vault in the church-
yard of Edgeworthstown, to which, in ac-
cordance with his written directions, he
was borne on the shoulders of his own
laborers, his coffin being "without vel-
vet, plate, or gilding." And the stone
that covers his remains contains no in-
scription beyond his name and the dates
of his birth and death.
That his was 66 a
life" there is abundant evidence;
useful and a well-spent
member of parliament, as a country mag-
istrate, as a landed proprietor (acknowl-
edging the duties as well as the rights of
property), he was entirely worthy in all
that appertained to his family and to so-
ciety he was considerate, generous, just;
while of the influence he exercised over
his own family we have the proofs not
only in his own writings, but in those of
his daughter.

as a

To estimate rightly both father and daughter, some notes on the state of Ireland nearly a century ago are needful. When, in 1782, Maria may be said to have first visited Ireland, and her father became "a resident Irish landlord," the country was in a condition very different indeed from that which it now presents and presented at the period of her removal from earth.

far in advance of his time. The poorer classes did not understand him; they were not prepared for the advent of a magistrate who required evidence only with a view to ascertain truth, nor for a gentleman who preferred rather to pay than to give, and whose established rule was to do right for right's sake; while neighboring gentry were utterly incapable of comprehending a man who was "If ever any country was governed indifferent to field sports and never drank by an oligarchy, Ireland was in that situ- to excess; who was faithful to his home, ation before the Union ;" thus Mr. Edge- and happiest when his children were his worth wrote in 1817. Society was in playmates; who was a politician, yet of a deeply degraded state; recklessness no party; whose religion was based on and extravagance were almost universal. universal charity, and who was the pro"As landlord and magistrate, the pro- tector of the poor and the advocate of prietor of an estate had to listen to per- the oppressed. The records of Ireland petual complaints, petty wranglings and towards the close of the eighteenth and equivocations, in which no human sa- the beginning of the nineteenth century gacity could discover truth or award jus- are now happily gone-by histories; but tice." A large proportion of the gentry something should be known of them to dwelt in "superb mansions," so far as comprehend the character of Richard regarded size, but "lived in debt, dan- Lovell Edgeworth. In the end he triger, and subterfuge, nominally posses- umphed over prejudice, disarmed hossors of a palace, but really in dread of a tility, and set an example the salutary jail." The dominant party regarded them- influence of which can scarcely be exagselves as the masters of slaves; "dri-gerated by any historian of the perilous vers" were the satellites of every land- time in which he lived.*

minds of all his children, indeed; she writes: "Few, I believe, have ever enjoyed such happiness or such advantages as I have had in the instruction, society, and unbounded confidence and affection of such a father and such a friend."

lord, and middlemen farmed nearly all His life was especially valuable as formthe land, taking it at a reasonable renting the mind of his daughter Maria-the (paying usually in advance) and reletting it immediately to poor tenants at the highest price possible to be pressed out of their necessities. It was generally a hopeless task that which strove to make the tenant even moderately comfortable. Justice was a thing never looked for, it was always the landlord against the tenant, and the tenant against the landlord.* It is certain that Mr. Edgeworth was

* In 1783 (thus writes Maria Edgeworth in her memoirs of her father) "a statute of King William III., entitled 'An Act to prevent the Growth of Popery,' ordained no less than a forfeiture of inheritance against those Catholics who had been educated abroad; at the pleasure of any informer it confiscated their estates to the next Protestant heir. That statute further deprived Papists of the power of obtaining any legal property by purchase; and simply for officiating in the service of his religion, any Catholic priest was liable to be imprisoned for life. Some of these penalties had fallen into disuse, but, as Mr. Dunning stated in the English House of Commons, many respectable Catholics still lived in fear of them, and some actually paid contributions to persons who, on the strength of this act, threatened them with prosecutions.'"

At that period it absolutely required some such intelligence to usher such an intellect into the world of letters. Authorship was considered out of the province of woman; and although Mr. Edgeworth records as an astonishing fact (on the authority of Burke) that there were then actually eighty thousand readers in Great Britain, very few of them were of the He tells us that his own gentler sex.

grandmother" was singularly averse to all learning in a lady, beyond reading the Bible and being able to cast up a week's household account," and did her best to prevent her daughter from "wasting her time upon books;" in vain, however, for

*The Sir Condys and Sir Murtaghs of Castle Rackrent had their originals in most Irish families at the time Maria Edgeworth wrote that tale.

she became a thoroughly educated woman, | which, for so many years, was the pride and to "her instructions and authority her son acknowledges himself indebted for the happiness of his life.

The critic Jeffrey writes: "A greater mass of trash and rubbish never disgraced the press of any country than the ordinary novels that filled and supported our circulating libraries down nearly to the time of Miss Edgeworth's first appearance." There were some exceptions, no doubt, and some works that have kept their places in the hearts of millions; but "the staple of the novel market was, beyond imagination, despicable, and had consequently sunk and degraded the whole department of literature of which it had usurped the name." The "rabble rout" of the Minerva press was scattered as by the wand of an enchanter when this admirable woman appeared; and to her we are perhaps indebted for "the Waverley novels," for it is avowed by Scott that he was prompted by the example of Miss Edgeworth to a desire to do for Scotland what she had done for Ireland.*

and joy of my life." The next book they published "in partnership" was the Essay on Irish Bulls; the illustrative anecdotes there retailed owed little to invention, and nearly all of them were facts; sometimes he told them, with racy humor and point, while she wrote them down. He was always at hand to advise, not often to write. In Patronage he did not pen a single passage, but the "plan" was his suggestion; it originated in a story invented by him, and the leading characters were sketched as he imagined them. "All his literary ambition was for me." His skill was exercised in "cutting: " "It is mine to cut and correct,' he once said, 'yours to write on;' and such, happily for me, was his power over my mind, that no one thing I ever began to write was ever left unfinished." In the few letters he addressed to her-for they were rarely apart even for a day — be signs himself, "Your critic, partner, fathfriend."

er,

To write for children was then considered below the dignity of authorship. Dr. Watts and Mrs. Barbauld had indeed thus "condescended;" but with these exceptions there were few or none able and willing to make their way into the minds and hearts of the "little ones."

There is abundant evidence that much

The growth of Maria's mind she traces wholly to her father, and very often she humbly and gratefully acknowledges how much her writings were improved by his critical taste and matured judgment. "In consequence of his earnest exhortations," she writes, "I began, in 1791 or 1792, to note down anecdotes of the children he was then educating;" writing also, for her own amusement and instruction, some of his conversation lessons. In their system of educating these children, "all the general ideas originated with him; the illustrating and manufacturing them, if I may use the expression, was mine." The Practical Education was thus a joint work of father and daughter; it was published in 1798, "and so commenced that literary partnership-children who were learning to speak

*"Without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humor, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact which pervade the works of my accomplished friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own country, of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so

achieved for Ireland-something which might introduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a more favorable light than they had been placed hitherto, and tend to procure sympathy for their virtues and indulgence in their oibles."-Scott.

of the true greatness of Maria Edgeworth's mind-and the inestimable value of her writings-resulted from the duty which nature imposed upon her when she was placed at the head of a family consisting of children of varied ages from infancy to youthhood. In 1814 she writes: "His eldest was above five-andforty, the youngest being only one year old." It therefore became the duty of the eldest to train the younger branches

when she was sedate and aged. Hence that educated power by which she brought the elevated sensibilities and sound moralities of life to a level with the comprehension of childhood; rendering knowledge, and virtue, and consideration, and order, the companions-almost the playthings as well as the teachers—of the nursery.

Mr. Edgeworth had sons and daughters by each of his four wives; he was