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And truly, Shelley, thine were strains
At once to fire and freeze the veins
Such as were haply spells of dread
In the high regions forfeited,
Breathed less intelligibly for
The duller earthly auditor."

sions which marks itself so deeply on ShelThis "unearthly" form of earthly pasgularly unique coloring to his whole life, ley's poetry and fate, while it gives a sinis so much both in his poetry and life was, no doubt, the real cause why there which it is difficult to approach without some preconceived bias. No man of equal either as a poet or a man. Even in these genius has been less adequately criticised lines Mr. Garnett scarcely reaches the centre of the difficulty. Shelley's mysticism is count for, even fancifully, by referring to not exactly of the kind which we can acits origin in another planet. It is quite

Nor is the injury to Shelley's poetry involved in this fragmentary treatment greater than that to his biography. Never was any great poet made known to the world by more fitful and inadequate biographic hints; never was there any great poet whose story stood more in need of a continuous and frank narrative, or whose nature was more susceptible of a living and distinct portraiture in such a narrative, than Shelley's. His life was like one of his own lyrics,-eager to breathlessness when the spell of action or emotion was on him,-faint to sickness in the after-mood of reaction, when it had passed away; at all times penetrated with the glow of a temperament in which selfish calculation had absolutely no share,—at all times underrating law, or rather holding the law of impulse intrinsically higher than any other, and chafing at what he called "the infinite malice of Destiny," when that which Wordsworth would have bowed before as the awful form of Duty, bade him imperawere strains At once to fire and freeze the veins ; tively curb the wayward impulse of the hour; -in short, a life in which the throbbing but the rest of the suggested explanation pulses of intellectualized passion can be felt seems to us scarcely to grasp the whole of distinctly at almost every point, and so the difficulty. The mysticism which runs unique as a whole, that his outward lot, whether as regards his errors, his persecutions, his companions, or his strange death and stranger funeral rites, seems almost the inseparable vesture of his marvellous na

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both through his life and his poetry approaches, odd, as it may appear, very closely to a somewhat naked simplicity of nature. There was wanting in him that nameless "awe" which teaches men to feel the difference between the natural and the supernat

Mr. Garnett has struck the true key to ural, and makes them hold even the most the character in the following lines:

"That Soul of planetary birth,

Tempered for some more prosperous Earth,
Happy, by error or by guile
Rapt from the star most volatile
That speeds with fleet and fieriest might
Next to the kernel of all light,
Fallen unwelcome, unaware,

On this low world of want and care,
Mistake, misfortune, and misdeed,
Passion and pang,-where not indeed
Ever might envious dæmon quell
The ardor indestructible;

The mood scarce human or divine,
Angelic half, half infantine;
The intense, unearthly quivering
Of rapture or of suffering;
The lyre, now thrilling wild and high,
Now stately as the symphony
That times the solemn periods,
Comings and goings of the gods,
And smitten with as free a hand
As if the plectrum were a wand
Gifted with magic to unbar
The silver gate of every star:-

solemn impulses of their own nature in restraint. Byron, and many of Shelley's contemporaries, felt this awe and wantonly violated it. Shelley seems to us not even to have felt it. Hence the strange perfection of his pantheism. He could throw his imagination into all the forms and attitudes of natural life, and interpret them as if he were conscious of nothing higher than beauty or deformity,-without shrinking in any way from the most naturalistic view which they suggested. Hence all the marvellous passion of his poetry has about it a tone from which we shrink;-without any of the license of Byron, without anything of the erotic vulgarity of Moore, with the highest sense of the sacredness of passion, there is a bold, eager naturalism of tone, a complete absence of any sense of distinction between the supersensual and the sensuous, which gives to Shelley's writings

something of the impression that they are | publications of facts bearing on the one or the poetry of a man with no "spirit" in St. two central errors of his life. There is much Paul's sense, though with a noble "soul" as in Shelley's life, looked at as a whole, which well as a sensitive physical body. This relieves the naked naturalism of his theory seems to us one of the central features of of love. But to this one focus we are again all his poetry. It shows senses of ethereal and again drawn by these unwise publicafire, an intellect of wonderful subtlety, a tions of fragments all bearing on this point. soul of pure magnanimity, but no shadow Hence we trust that Mr. Garnett's may be of divine responsibility, no consciousness the last. He is not unfit to write, whenever of living under an eternal eye and will, the time shall come, a complete and harmoand none of the breadth of sympathy and nious life of the poet, embodying all that has judgment which that consciousness never yet appeared, and laying no undue stress on fails to bring. But if this be the great neg- controverted points,—and till he does so, ative feature of this wonderful poet's writ- we hope he will not again publish on the ings, the jar with which it strikes upon us is subject. indefinitely increased by these fragmentary

RUSHES were used to strew the floors in Normandy when Wm. the Conqueror was born, for "at the very moment when the infant burst into life, and touched the ground he filled both hands with the rushes strewed upon the floor, firmly grasping what he had taken up." This prodigy was joyfully witnessed by the women gossipping on the occasion; and the midwife hailed the propitious omen, declaring that the boy would be a king.

"WHEN Harold was in Normandy, William took him with him in his expedition to Brittany, to make proof of his prowess, and at the same time with the deeper design of showing to him his military equipment, that he might perceive how far preferable was the Norman sword to the English battle-axe."

HAROLD's spies, before the battle of Hastings, reported that almost all the Norman army "had the appearance of priests, as they had the whole face with both lips shaven. For the English leave the upper lip unshorn, suffering the hair continually to increase; which Caesar affirms to have been a national custom with the ancient

inhabitants of Britain."

THE editor of Rabelais says ce qu'il y a de certain, c'est que ce furent les Goths qui introduiserent l'usage de dîner et de souper, c'est à dire, de faire deux grands repas par jour. En quoi on s'éloigna de l'ancienne coutume qui étoit de dîner fort légèrement, et de souper à fond."

A SAXON nun wrote six plays in imitation of Terrence, but in honor of virginity. They were published at Nusenberg, 1501; but the book is singularly scarce. She wrote circiter, A.D. 980.

ALCUIN writes to the monks of Wearmouth, obliquely accusing them of having done the very thing which he begs them not to do. "Let the youths be accustomed to attend the praises of our heavenly King, not to dig up the burrows of foxes, or pursue the winding mazes of hares."

ETHELBALD of Mercia, who died 756, exempted all monasteries and churches in his kingdom from public taxes, works, and impositions, except the building of forts and bridges, from which none can be released.

before the conquest.

He also gave the servants of God "perfect liberty in the product of their woods and lands, and the right of fishing." Ergo, there were "THE English at that time wore short gar-rights of the feudal character, and game laws ments reaching to the mid-knee; they had their hair cropped, their beards shaven, their arms laden with golden bracelets, their skins adorned with punctured designs. They were accustomed to eat till they became surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. These latter qualities they imparted to their conquerors; as to the rest they adopted their manners.'

ATHELSTAL, his hair was "flaxen, as I have seen by his reliques, and beautifully wreathed with golden threads." Was he then buried with his hair thus disposed? This was a fashion at Troy, see the death of Euphorbus.

From The Economist.

THE COMING CONTEST IN BRAZIL.

turbed, the trader loaded his ships in the easiest possible manner by embarking whole THE Revue des deux Mondes has recently families of negroes; but when the voyage contained some papers on the state of Brazil became difficult, the cargo had to be picked, as novel as they are instructive. The great and only strong bone and muscle were carempire of South America is in many respects ried to the market, while the weak, the so wonderfully like the great republic of the women and children, had to stop behind. North, that it is all but impossible to read This had the double consequence of restrictthe flaming history of the one without being ing the field of slavery, and of altering the brought to think of the other, and, seeing mode of slave industry. It was at the same the effect of slavery on democratic institu- period that both the American and Brazilian tions, to follow with curious eye its result in slaveholders began to neglect the old system a monarchy. The same British ships which of husbandry, and to confine themselves to had brought back our troops from the the more profitable cultivation of a single United States, escorted King Joaò over from article-the cotton-plant in the north, the Portugal into Brazil, and while a new re-coffee-tree in the south. It was found that public grew up on one side of the Atlantic, the black machine, not much given to, and a new kingdom of equal extent developed not much allowed to think, was not able to itself on the other. It was to be a singular trial between monarchy and republic, such as the world never saw before. A territory of three million square miles on either side; an endless shore, splendid rivers, and everything that conduces to the greatness of nations, were supplied in abundance by nature. There was not a spot in the whole picture to mar its brilliancy, except the almost unobserved sign of cancer, hidden in the one "domestic institution."

compete with the free white in the ordinary branches of field labor, which are directed to the production of food, and require, on account of the diversity of cultivation, a certain amount of intelligence. The free man, on the other hand, had no desire to be connected with a most monotonous exercise of mere physical force, and contented himself, both in the north and south of America, with confining the new staple industry within a given boundary. It was thus that the slave power, having entirely changed its old form, grew up into a political, social, and commercial monopoly, forming a state within a state. Neither the ultra-democratic institutions of the North American republic nor the monarchic form of government in the South, were of any avail to check the growth of the disease, but both led exactly to the same result.

The first visible appearance of the disease was almost simultaneous in both countries. The influence of Great Britain having destroyed the main sources of the traffic in human flesh and blood, almost identical phenomena began to develop themselves in the great Republic of the North and the great kingdom of the South. In both free labor began to encroach upon slavery, pushing the "institution ” onward from the mod- There is reason to believe that the Emerate zone towards the equator, and fixing a peror Pedro II. has not only been long ago geographical boundary between liberty and fully alive to the dangers of the situation, bondage. Previous to the treaty between but that he has a strong personal antipathy England and Brazil for the abolition of the to the traffic in human flesh and blood. slave trade (1826), a full-grown black man His majesty, and at least two of his constiwas to be bought at Rio de Janeiro for about tutional advisers in the present ministry, £20, while a few years after his price rose to have long stood forward against the endouble the amount. The treaty was not ob- croachments of the slave power, but with, on served by any means; but the commerce in the whole, as little success as the abolition "ebony wood" grew more hazardous, and party in the United States. This is the the trader had to be paid for his risk. For more convincing in respect to the important about thirty years longer some fifty thousand question whether a monarchical government slaves were annually imported into Brazil, would have prevented the present awful the cargoes gradually rising in price, and strife in North America, because the consticompletely changing in character. While tutional activity of the Brazilian emperor is the traffic in black men was open and undis- by no means confined within narrow limits.

According to the charter of 1831, the gov- the heir apparent (or father to the heir apernment of the empire is vested in two pow-parent) of the throne of Brazil. The prince ers, the legislative and the executive, the received the territory as a dowry on his marlatter entirely under the control of the sovereign. The legislature consists of a Senate of fifty-four members, appointed by the emperor, and a House of Representatives, elected by the suffrages of all free citizens having property to the amount of two hundred milreas, or about £35 annually. This must be acknowledged to be a strong monarchical constitution, yet it has been as ineffective hitherto in dealing with the "institution" as the most advanced republic. The slave power in Brazil, so far from being repressed by the strong arm of an onlightened sovereign, is, on the contrary, increasing its influence from year to year, to the absorption of nearly the whole administrative machinery of the state-a phenomenon well worth studying by both the friends and the enemies of republican institutions.

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riage with the sister of Pedro II., and by making it over to an enterprising community of free settlers, has very probably done more for the abolition of slavery, than by enrolling his nephews under the banner of General McClellan. So much is certain, that wherever these colonists are setting their foot in Brazil, slavery is retreating before them. The labor of the black man had previously degraded agricultural industry in the country to such an extent that not even the plow was known to the masters of the land some thirty years ago, and was looked upon, in the hands of the German immigrants, as an absolutely new invention. No wonder, then, that the empire of Brazil, which might produce corn enough to feed the whole globe, has not sufficient for its own inhabitants, but must import food from neighboring States unafflicted with the "institution."

The present political situation of the great South American empire is of a very extraor- There are all the signs that the battle of dinary kind. The country, over all its vast slavery must be fought one day quite the extent of territory, has only some eight same in monarchical Brazil as it is now in million inhabitants, but of these nearly one- republican North America, though in all half are slaves. Thanks to the vigilance of likelihood the struggle will be less severe. English cruisers, the African traffic is at this It almost seems that the slave lords in the moment all but suppressed, and the coffee- southern empire are already preparing for it, planter on the Amazon, like the cotton- and trimming their sails for the coming planter on the Mississippi, has to look for storm. The power of the party lies chiefly his supply of hands to home-grown material. in the nineteen provincial assemblies, the Thus slavery is concentrating itself in the establishment of which dates back to 1835, northern regions of the empire, while a con- a time when Brazil was torn by internal distinual stream of free labor is flowing in at orders, ending in a general rising of the the south. It is true, the immigration into slaves in the north. To subdue the mutinous Brazil of German, Swiss, Dutch, and Danish negroes, the local parliaments were tempolaborers, though highly encouraged by the rarily invested with considerable powers, Imperial Government, is but small as com- which they have retained ever since. The pared with the human tide which continued jurisdiction of these assemblies, composed rushing into the Northern Republic up to almost entirely of slave-owners, is analogous the last year or two; but it has been most to that granted to the individual States of effective, nevertheless, among a more limited the North American republic, and is exerpopulation, and has produced already some cised very nearly to the same ends as in the of the results visible in the United States, in Southern States previous to the outbreak of the pressure of white crowds against black. the war. As a consequence, the Imperial The Germans, in particular, have established Government is helpless in many respects, in the province of Rio-Grande-do-Sul, some and the central parliament even must give very flourishing settlements, which are likely way oftener than is desirable to local influto become, at no very distant time, the ence. It does not seem at all likely that Massachusetts of Southern America. It is king and ministers will get the upperhand a noticeable fact that the nucleus of these in this struggle, which has been going on Saxon colonies was formed on an immense now for many years, with increasing gain to estate belonging to the Prince de Joinville, the slave power. What is more probable is

that the free element in the Southern Bra- | moreover, had the effect of bringing into zilian States, strong already in Santa-Catha-prominent notice the kind of influence rina, Rio-Grande-do-Sul, and two or three wielded by the Emperor of the French in other provinces, will conquer the oligarchic Italian affairs. Some of the French organs rule in the local assemblies, making the openly declare that both Italian unity and struggle similar to what it has been in the German unity are incompatible with the North American Union. In this case seces- grandeur, or more correctly speaking with sion would be ripe at once, to be suppressed the ascendency, of France. Hence, we are either by the central Government, or to end assured, it is her policy to oppose, both on in the establishment of new and completely the Rhine and in the Italian peninsula, that independent states. The movement has, to consolidation of power by which alone the some extent, begun already, in the opposi- integrity either of Italy or Germany can be tion of Pernambuco and Bahia, the two secured. The Italians display considerable most important cities of Brazil, next to Rio irritation at the audacity with which the dede Janeiro, to the Imperial Government. signs of the emperor against the indepenTo subdue the threatening storm, one gov- dence of their country are avowed. This is ernor after another is despatched into the greatly increased by the feeling which premalcontent provinces, in order to watch the vails that Garibaldi has been sacrificed both symptoms of rebellion, without having suf- by the king and his ministers, to satficient time to participate in it. Some of the isfy the ambitious views of Napoleon. The last presidents of Pernambuco scarcely en- critical state of Garibaldi's health, caused joyed more than a month of office, and cases by the severity of one of the wounds which have happened in which a fortnight's gov- he received in the late encounter, serves to ernment was all the time allowed. The add fuel to the flame of public indignation. wisdom of such a system of mistrust seems In the mean time the conviction gains extremely doubtful, and little fitted to ensure ground that Ratazzi will be compelled to the otherwise uncertain victory of monarchi- give place to Ricasoli. cal institutions over an oligarchical slave power.

From The Press, 13 Sept. EUROPEAN PROSPECTS. THE minds of men on the continent of Europe are still much excited by the extraordinary events of the last few days. The connivance of Victor Emmanuel and his ministers in the earlier proceedings of Garibaldi, their subsequent determination, at the bidding of the Emperor Napoleon, to adopt decisive measures for the suppression of the movement, the conflict at Aspromonte, the defeat and capture of Garibaldi, and the dangerous character of one of the wounds which he received in the short encounter, form topics not only of animated discussion, but also for serious reflection in every part of Europe. These events have,

Uneasiness also prevails to a considerable extent in France, where the emperor has, by his doubtful policy towards the Papacy, and his hostile attitude towards Italy, created a host of enemies. Marshal M'Mahon is at the head of a new military party now rising in that country. It possesses great influence and numbers in its ranks most of the marshals and generals. The empress is said to regard this new party with favor, and we need scarcely add that the Pope has no more ardent admirer and supporter than Marshal M'Mahon. This alliance between the military and clerical parties-the most powerful in France-is ominous, and may in a great measure explain the recent vacillations of the French emperor in respect to Italian questions in general. It is evident that affairs on the Continent are gradually assuming a very menacing aspect, and it is only by the exercise of the greatest caution that a painful explosion can be averted.

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