course of which he informed her that Jove's thunderbolts might be hurled at her husband's head at any period of the day; that we all must die; that the bride may be a widow on the morrow of her nuptials; and other equally cheerful truths. Yet at his sister's weddingbreakfast, Mr. Blackbrook coquetted with the choice parts of a chicken, and drowned his sorrow in a delectable jelly.

So ran his poetic commentary. His boundless wealth consisted of intellectual treasures When for a short time he was betrayed into exclusively, and the sweet declaration that the expression of any cheerful sentiment, if moss was his velvet, was meant to convey to he ever allowed that it was a fine day, he the reader the simplicity and Arcadian nature quickly relapsed into congenial gloom, and of his habits. The relation who had the discovered that there might be a thunderstorm assurance to leave him a fortune, was dragged within the next half-hour. His only comfort remorselessly through fifty lines as a punish- was in the reflection that his maternal uncle's ment for his temerity. Yet, in a fit of ab- family were consumptive. Here he anticipated straction, Mr. Blackbrook hurried to Doctors' a fine field for the exercise of his poetic gifts, Commons to prove the will; hereby display- and, accordingly, when his aunt was gathered ing his resignation to the horrible degree of to her forefathers, her dutiful nephew laid a comfort which the money assured to him. It sheet of blank paper upon his desk, and was not for him, however, to forget that life settled himself down to write a Dirge." He was chequered with woe, that it was a vale of began by attributing all the virtues to hertears-a brief, trite, contemptible matter. devoting about six lines to each separate The gaiety of his house and relations horrified virtue. Her persou next engaged his attenhim; they interfered, at every turn, with tion, and he discovered, though none of her his melancholy mood. He sighed for the fate friends had ever remarked her surpassing of Byron or Chatterton! Why was he loveliness, that her step was as the breath of doomed to have his three regular meals per the summer wind on flowers (certainly no diem; to lie, at night, upon a feather-bed, and gardener would have trusted her upon his the recognised layers of mattresses; to have box-borders); that she was fresh as Hebe (she a new coat when he wanted one; to have always breakfasted in bed); that she had pearly money continually in his pocket, and to be teeth (her dentist has maliciously informed accepted when he made an offer of marriage? us that they were made of the very best ivory); The fates were obviously against him. One and, finally, that her general deportment of his sisters fell in love. How hopefully he was most charming so charming that Mr. watched the course of her passion! How Blackbrook never dared trust himself in her fondly he lingered near, in the expectation- seductive presence. Having proceeded thus the happy expectation-of a lovers' quarrel. far with his melancholy duty, the poet But his sister had a sweet disposition-a ate a hearty supper of the heaviest cold mouth made to distil the gentlest and most pudding, and-we had almost written-went tender accents. The courtship progressed to bed-but we remember that Mr. Blackwith unusual harmony on both sides. Only brook always "retired to his solitary couch." once did fortune appear to favour him. One He rose betimes on the following morning, evening, he observed that the lovers avoided looking most poetically pale. His dreams each other, and parted coldly. Now was his had been of woe, and darkness, and death; opportunity; and in the still midnight, when the pudding had had the desired effect. Again all the members of his household were in bed, he placed himself at his desk, and having he took his seat in his chamber, and, by the read over the prefatory lines which we have midnight oil, threw his soul into some plain-endeavoured to describe, he threw his fra tive lines "On a Sister's Sorrow." He grant curl from his marble forehead, and mourned for her in heart-breaking syllables; thought of the funeral pall, the darkened hall, likened her lover to an adder in an angel's of grief acute, and the unstrung lute. He path; dwelt on her quiet grey eyes, her stately put his aunt's sorrowing circle in every proportions, and her classic face. He doomed possible position of despair. He represented her to years of quiet despair, and saw her his surviving uncle as threatening to pass the fickle admirer the gayest of the gay. He serene portals of reason; he discovered that concluded with the consoling intelligence, that a dark tide rolled at the unhappy man's feet; he would go hand in hand with her along the that the sun itself would henceforth look darkened passage to the grave. His sister, however, did not avail herself of this proffered companionship, but chose rather to be reconeiled, and to marry her lover.

Mr. Blackbrook found some consolation for this disappointment in the composition of an epithalamium of the most doleful character on the occasion of his sister's marriage, in the

dark to him; that he would never smile again; and that, in all probability, the shroud would soon enwrap his manly form. He next proceeded to describe minutely the pearly tears of his cousins, and the terrible darkness that had come over their bright young dreams. An affecting allusion to his own unfathomable grief on the occasion, was concluded by the

hope that he might soon join his sainted a bark; he declared that when the pleasureaunt, though he had never taken the least party embarked at Richmond Bridge, Death, trouble to pay her a visit while she lived in the lean fellow, was standing upon the beach St. John's Wood. This touching dirge was with his weapon upraised. Asterisks deprinted upon mourning paper, and distributed scribed the death; and some of his friends among Mr. Black brook's friends. The death of declared this passage the best in the poem. an aunt was an affecting incident, but still it He then went on to inform his readers that fell short of the brink of despair. Mr. Black- all was over; but by this expression the brook's natural abiding-place was the edge reader must not infer that the dirge was of a precipice. His muse must be fed on brought to a conclusion. By no means. Mr. heroic sorrows, hopeless agony, and other Blackbrook had made up his mind that his poetical condiments of the same serious state of despair required at least one hundred nature. The course of modern life was lines to give it adequate expression. He too level for his impetuous spirit; but had devoted twenty to the death of a fly-in the absence of that terrible condition surely, then, a female cousin deserved one to which he aspired, he caught at every hundred. This logical reflection spurred incident that could nerve the pinion of his him on. He pulled down the blinds, and in muse for grander flights. A dead fly, which a gloom that suited well with his forlorn state he found crushed between the leaves of a of mind, he began a picture of his condition. book, furnished him with a theme for one of With the aid of his dictionary, having asserted his tenderest compositions. He speculated that the shroud enwrapped a cousin's form, upon the probable career of the fly,-opined he reflected that he envied the place of the that it had a little world of its own, a family, winding-sheet, and was jealous of the worms. and a sense of the beautiful. This effusion He felt that he was warming into his subject. met with such fervent praise, that he followed He tried to think of the condition in which it up by "Thoughts on Cheese Dust," in which the remains of his relative would speedily hedived into the mysteries of these animalculæ, be; and having carefully referred to an emiand calculated the myriads of lives that were nent medical work as to the length of time sacrificed to give a momentary enjoyment to which the human body requires to resolve the "pampered palate of man." His atten- itself into its original earth, (for he was pretion was called, however, from these minor cise in his statements,) he proceeded to describe, poetic considerations, to a matter approach- with heart-rending faithfulness, the various ing in its gravity to that heroic pitch of stages of this inevitable decay. That was sorrow which he had sought so unsuccessfully true poetry. He declared that the worm hitherto.

would crawl upon those lips that the lover had fondly pressed, and that the hand which once touched the harp so magically was now motionless for ever. Having brought this tragic description to a conclusion, he proceeded to number the flowers that should spring from his cousin's grave, and to promise that

from year to year,

Roses shall flourish, moistened by a tear.

His cousin was drowned by the upsetting of a pleasure-boat. At such a calamity it was reasonable to despair-to refuse comfort to leave his hair uncombed-to look constantly on the ground-to lose all appetite to write flowing verse. Mr. Blackbrook entered upon his vocation with a full sense of its heroism. At least one hundred lines would be expected from him on so tremendous an occasion. The catastrophe was so poetical! The sea-weed might have been This vow evidently eased his heart a little, represented entangled in the golden tresses of and enabled him to conclude the poem in a the poor girl, had the accident happened more cheerful spirit. He wound up with the reonly a little nearer the Nore; and the print flection, that care was the lot of humanity, and of her fair form might have been faintly that it was his duty to bear his proportion traced upon "the ribbed sea-sand." This of the common load with a patient though was unfortunate. In reality the "melancholy bruised spirit. He felt that to complete his occurrence took place at Richmond. Mr. poetic destiny he ought to wander, none Blackbrook began by calling upon the wil-knew whither, and to turn up only at lows of Richmond and its immediate vicinity most unseasonable hours, and in most to dip their tender branches in the stream solemn places. But unhappily he was inin token of their grief. Mr. Blackbrook, formed that it was necessary he should felicitously remembering that Pope once remain on the spot for the proper managelived not far from Richmond, next invoked ment of his affairs. Fate would have it so. that poet's shade, and begged the loan of his Why was he not allowed to pursue his melodious rhythm. But the shade in ques-destiny? He was one day mentally bewailing tion not answering to the summons, all that the even tenour of his way, when a few kind remained for the sorrowing poet to do was to friends suggested that he should publish his take down his dictionary of rhymes, and tune effusions. At first he firmly refused. What his own lyre to its most mournful cadences. He set to work. He called the Thames a treacherous stream; he christened the wherry

was fame to him-a hopeless, despairing man on the brink of the grave! His friends, however, pressed him in the end into compliance;

An eminent critic wrote the following opinion of our friend and his poetry :

and in due time Mr. Blackbrook's "Life-Drops less materialists, verse-makers without a sense from the Heart" were offered to the public of the beautiful. They are patronised by those for the price of ten shillings-little more than to whom they write down; and the effect of one shilling per drop. their lucubrations is to enchain the imagination, to debase the moral capacity, to weaken that spiritual faith which disdains the horrors "We notice Mr. Blackbrook as the repre- of the churchyard. Mr. Blackbrook's advensentative of a school-the Doleful School. He tures in search of despair were undertaken, to draws terrible pictures; but what are his our mind, in a cold-blooded spirit. A resolute materials? He does not write from the heart, determination to discover the gloomiest phase inasmuch as, if he really felt that incessant of every earthly matter, a longing for the agony, which is his everlasting theme, we applause of a foolish clique, and a confused should find in his performances some original idea that Chatterton was a poet because he imagery-something with an individual stamp. perished miserably, while Byron owed his We rather hold Mr. Blackbrook to be a very inspiration to his domestic unhappiness-make deliberate, vain, and calculating being, who up that picture of a verse-writer which we takes advantage of a domestic calamity to have endeavoured to delineate. When extradisplay his knack of verse-making; who com- ordinary vanity is allied to very ordinary posedly turns a couplet upon the coffin of his ability, the combination is an unwholesome, mistress; whose sympathy and sensibility are ascetic, weak and deformed_mind:-such a only the ingenious masks of inordinate self-mind has Mr. Blackbrook. He endeavours to esteem. His view of the poetic is only worthy drag us into a vault, when we would regard of an undertaker. He sees nature through a the heavenly aspect of death. Ask him to black-crape veil. He describes graves with solve the great mystery, and he points to the the minuteness of a body-snatcher; and when fading corpse. His tears suggest the use of he would be impressive is disgusting. You onions; and his threats of self-destruction, see the actor, not the poet. He admits you remind us of the rouge and Indian ink of an (for he cannot help it) behind the scenes. His indifferent melo-dramatic actor. We have no rhymes are not the music of a poetic faculty; respect for his misfortunes, since we find that but rather the jingle of a parrot. He is one he esteems them only as opportunities for of a popular school, however; and while the display: we know that despair is welcome to public buy his wares, he will continue to him. He turns his back to the sun, and refashion them. Materialist to the back-bone, joices to see the length of shade he can throw he simpers about the littleness of human upon the earth. Nature to him is only a vast dealings and human sympathies. He who charnel-house-so constructed that he may pretends to be melted with pity over the fate sing a life-long requiem. He would have us of a fly, would use his mother's tombstone as journey through life with our eyes fixed upon a writing-desk. He deals in human sorrow, the ground, scenting the gases of decay. But as his baker deals in loaves. Nervous dow-wiser men-poets of the soul-bid us look up agers, who love tears and 'dreadful de- to heaven, nor disdain, as we raise our heads, scriptions; who enjoy a good cry;' and to mark the beauty of the lily-to gather, who have the peculiar faculty of seeing the and with hearty thanks, the fragrance of the dark side of everything, enjoy his dish of rose." verses amazingly. To sensitive young ladies there is a terrible fascination in his inventories of the tomb and its appendages; and children are afraid to walk about in the dark, after listening to one of his effusions. The followers of his school include one or two formidable young ladies, who enter into descriptions of death-that is to say, the material part of death-with a minuteness that must excite the envy even of the most ingenious auctioneer. When bent upon a fresh composition, these terrible young poetesses, having killed a child, proceed to trace its journey to the tomb its return to earth. How they gloat over the dire changes! -how systematically the painful portrait is proceeded with! In this they rival Chinese artists. And people of ill-regulated sympathy, who, containing within them all the elements of spiritual culture, are yet affected only by sensual appeals, regard these doleful effusions as the outpourings of true human suffering.

Mr. Blackbrook and his disciples are hap

A WINTER SERMON.
THOU dwellest in a warm and cheerful home,

Thy roof in vain the winter tempest lashes;
While houseless wretches round thy mansion roam,
On whose unshelter'd heads the torrent plashes.
Thy board is loaded with the richest meats,
O'er which thine eyes in sated languor wander;
Many might live on what thy mastiff eats,
Or feast on fragments which thy servants squander.
Thy limbs are muffled from the piercing blast,
Many have scarce a rag about them cast,
When from thy fireside corner thou dost sally;

With which the frosty breezes toy and dally.
Thou hast soft smiles to greet thy kiss of love,

When thy light step resounds within the portal;
Some have no friend save Him who dwells above,

No sweet communion with a fellow-mortal.
Thou sleepest soundly on thy costly bed,
Lull'd by the power of luxuries unnumber'd,
Some pillow on a stone an aching head,
Never again to wake when they have slumber'd.

Then think of those, who, form'd of kindred clay,
Depend upon the doles thy bounty scatters;
And God will hear them for thy welfare pray-
They are His children, though in rags and tatters.

He

biliments, descries, with joy, the large steady "light" of the North Foreland, which forces its beams through the mist, and tells them all they want to know of their position.

by some inconceivable process, and the shapeless mash of trodden candle is stuck upright, somehow, and the wick lighted. The chart is snatched from the locker-such a chart !—all dirty, greasy, tar-bethumbed, torn, tattered, LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHT-BOATS. and begrimed-and over this the captain lies flat, with his nose almost touching it, and WHEN the winter fire blazes redly on the seeming to assist his search quite as actively curtains, and the happy faces assembled in as the brown damp finger with which he goes the room; when the table is spread, and the poking and pointing over the paper. sofa "wheeled round," and the whistling finds soon enough the dreaded Goodwin wind is heard without, rising to a gale,-then Sands - and he finds the North Foreland may we well, as we often do, bethink ourselves Lighthouse on the chart; and, according to of the many anxious eyes out at sea, which his "reckoning," he ought now to see the are strained to catch a glimpse of the well- "light"—but where is it? He rushes up on known "light" that befriends the sailor on deck. It is not yet visible. Can he see the his pathless journey. gleam of the Light-boats off the Goodwins? Our coast is so well furnished with light- No-no signs of them. He stares into the houses, that this is the first of our arrangements compass-box, and alters the vessel's course, which strikes foreigners with admiration as in alarm-and down again he comes, almost they approach our shores; but so dangerous headlong, to work his reckoning over again; is the whole navigation, so beset with rocks, and again to throw himself with his elbows quicksands, sunken ledges, howling forelands, on the ragged chart, holding a bit of candle in "and hollow crescents full of gathered blasts," his fingers which he has snatched out of the that the sudden withdrawal of a single "light" candle-stick, and dropping the grease all over from an important position would, in all pro- St. George's Channel-till the voice of the bability, be the cause of hundreds of ship- mate, on deck, gladdens his ears with the wrecks in a single night. tidings that the "light" is visible - the When there is a brisk wind, and the night" bearings as they had calculated-and all thick and hazy, with what straining eyes do right. The passenger runs up on deck, and, men at sea continue to gaze in the direction shivering, in his half-attached fluttering hawhere the hoped-for light is expected-and, how often, in the wrong direction! In small merchant crafts-a schooner, for instancewhen the number of hands amounts but to the master, the mate, one man, and a cabin- Next morning the passenger, to his great boy, and his other "appointments," in the content, was landed; and after he had reway of charts, and compasses, and anchors, is freshed himself during some days (and of all in the same poor condition; how exciting a passengers that need a little solace, on landing, time is that, when the "light" which, accord- the passenger of a merchant schooner needs it ing to his calculation, ought to be visible, is as much as any,) he felt a strong desire to exnowhere apparent - his vessel running fast amine closely the arrangements of the "light," through the water-the wind getting up, per- which had been such a source of anxiety, haps to a gale, and his top-gallant sail has to and subsequent congratulation, out at sea. be suddenly taken in, and his top-sail reefed! He accordingly drove over to the North ForeBut, where is the light ?-the master and the land Lighthouse-and was refused admitmate cannot see it below; can the man or tance. He drew out his purse; but was rethe boy aloft see any signs of it ?—No, neither.quested to put it in his pocket again, and go Can the wet and shivering passenger, who home. had turned in," but has come on deck, in Thus disappointed and admonished, the his drawers, to get in everybody's way-can visitor retraced his steps, and after mature he see anything of the light which ought to be somewhere out there? No; he sees nothing but haze and mist; and, in fact, his eyes are full of salt spray. Down rushes the master through the little hatchway, and after him hurries the passenger, with a vague no-notion of helping him, he knows not how, to do he knows not what. The candle has got upset, and all is darkness below. The lucifer-box, of course, is not in its place-it has been upset the matches are lying about on the wet floor of the cabin, and are bent and broken in the vain attempt to ignite them. Now, the cabin-boy comes down, and, after his head has been well "clouted," in the dark, he, at length, bellowingly produces a light,

66

consideration, addressed a polite note to the proper authority at Ramsgate. From this gentleman he received an order of admission, and the same evening he betook himself again to the North Foreland.

The walk being gradually up-hill, all the way, and including a bend in the road, there was no sign of the "light," till on a sudden turn it was discovered in all its beaming altitude. Observing it now more narrowly as he approached, the visitor perceived that the glass-house, on the top of the tower, (sometimes called the "lanthorn," and, in its shape, closely resembling an observatory,) had two front-faces, so to speak; the lamps being arranged upon an obtuse angle-one set of

them facing up-channel, and one down-channel for a constant, graduated, supply of oil; for air-yet the power of the whole would also be currents, smoke-tubes, &c. The copper platform visible for a considerable extent, horizontally, was of semicircular shape, and broad enough out at sea. On passing near the tower, the to admit of one person at a time walking in individual lamps and reflectors are visible in front of the lamps, between them and the glass each face, or set; but at sea this individuality window. The visitor was now informed that is all merged in a general effect. he might do this. After a little hesitation, with a reverential foot he accordingly as cended a few steps at one side, and made a slow and cautious passage in front of the lamps with their great, glaring, silver, planet-eyes of reflectors, that made him contract his body to its most attenuated dimensions, and gaze upon its dense bit of darkness with a strange recollection of the story of the fly that got into the philosopher's microscope. He felt like that fly, and was heartily glad to arrive at the other end of the platform, and humbly descend the steps. He had scarcely done so, when buff came something against one of the windows, and fell outside! The window being of thick plate-glass, no injury was done, but the new-comer, whatever it was, had ¦ evidently got the worst of it.

Knocking at the door of the entrance, at the base of the tower, and producing his 'order,' our visitor was at once admitted to a little stone ante-room, where the paper underwent a careful scrutiny. Its authenticity being ascertained, he was conducted onwards, and upwards, admiring as he went the various utensils and apparatus that were hung upon walls or deposited on shelves-oil cans, oil measures, spare reflectors, cotton for wicks, glass lamp-chimneys, leathers, cloths, spare window-panes, storm-plates, chamoisskins, bottles of spirits of wine, and many odd-shaped things in shining copper, brass, glass, zine, iron or tin. Likewise, a thick woollen night-cap, standing upright in a dark corner, and having a thoughtful appearance. The visitor now found the stone stair-case, A little balcony runs outside the window, he was ascending, had become much narrower, into which the visitor now went, and there he and he was cautioned not to speak loud or be found-lying flat on its back-wings expanded otherwise noisy, lest he should wake the head-beak open-and dead-a huge muff-faced light-keeper, who had gone to bed early, as it was his turn for the next watch. The visitor, therefore, with a softened boot, and a face of increased seriousness, renewed his toiling ascent between the narrow, spiral, white, vault-like stone walls, leading up to the light-room," at the summit of the tower. "Hush!" murmured the light-keeper every now and then, by way of preventing the visitor from speaking. All was silent, with the exception of the hollow sound of the ascending footsteps.

At length, after a wearisome spiral journey, the broad landing-place below the light-room was attained. Several more steps led up to a dusky closed door, that had an ominous appearance as of the entrance to a chamber of mysterious treasures, at the top of a tower in some eastern tale. The visitor thought he could distinguish a bright gleam, edging the bottom of the door. Being told to ascend, he prepared his mind, and did so ;-then laying his hand with becoming awe upon the door, he slowly pushed it open.

owl! "Ah," said the light-keeper, "our gun can reach further out to sea, and over land, than any you can handle. We often have this balcony strewed with sea gulls and other birds that have struck themselves dead. In the game season, lots of partridges, and phea sants too, fly at the light-they can't resist it and most of them are killed, or taken. Sometimes we find nearly a bushel of larks lying all about."

The visitor fell into a train of reflections on these fatal instances of irresistible attraction,

which lasted him all the way down stairs, and after he had left the lighthouse; in which meditation there passed in rapid succession before his imagination, numerous flights of poems about the moth and the candle; and Cupid and Psyche ('specially Psyche); and sea-birds rushing across the homeless brine to El Dorado, and finding Death; and Antony and Cleopatra; and Icarus; and Macbeth; and Napoleon; and wild-ducks; and partridges-many of them roasted-and owls whom nobody can eat; and sailors' nighttelescopes; and Herrick's songs about birds, and his own bird-like songs; and Shelley's exquisite Ode to a Skylark. By this time the visitor found himself on the verge of the cliff, and his steps were, luckily, stopped at the same time with his train of reflections.

He found himself in a small chamber full of light, in shape very much like a handframe for cucumbers, only taller. Upon a platform of bright copper, about four feet high, stood the back part of an apparatus, on which were arranged a series of lamps, each having a glass chimney over it, and a reflector But although to a sailor anxiously "shootbehind it, circular, concave, larger than the ing" the dark horizon with his night-glass, top of the largest warming-pan, made of the interest in all lighthouses is nearly the copper at the back, with a pure silver face, same, and varies only with the circumstances and polished, in this face, to the highest of the moment, to a passenger the interest in degree of brilliancy, so that it could not be looked at directly in front. The lamps and reflectors were ranged in a double row, and behind each were pipes, and other apparatus,

any fixed "light" is seldom to be compared to that which he experiences in watching the appearance and disappearance of a revolving "light." Suppose a dark night, with few