time, £376,295.003; and the deficiency of the latter, contrasted with the former, is £248,503,096. Our business with the colonies presented a very different result: us. stolen goods. All our commercial arrangements The total summation of our importations from the colonies for the five years is £195,318,202. The total exportation of our manufactures and productions to the colonies in the same time is £171,085,194. The deficiency of exportations, contrasted with importations from the British colonies and possessions, is £24,233,008. We have already mentioned that these figures must not be taken in Without including the Anglo-Indian territory— their bare signification, and that they are liable to the most magnificent empire of Asia-we possess many alterations before we get at their real state. more than two Europes for magnitude in our The colonies bought from us more than they sold, colonies. The American colonics, stretching from because our exportations of foreign goods went the Atlantic to the Pacific, have a climate not chiefly to them, and because all the bullion which differing materially from our own. The Australian the colonists have dug or gathered came chiefly to group, including New Zealand, have all climates Our exports to foreign countries were equal in which Europeans can labour and live out of to sixty per cent. of our importations, on the gross doors, in the open fields. The South African return; and our exports to the colonies, by the colony commences with a temperate climate, capasame statement, was eighty-seven and a half per ble of yielding tropical produce, however; and it cent. If we could add the bullion to our other extends, or may extend, to the north for au indefiimportations from the colonies, we should arrive at nite distance, and, if we please, to the line. The a more accurate state of the trade than can be Indian empire embraces all the climates, from the made at present; but with this addition no doubt frigid to the torrid. It is not necessary for us, can exist that it enables us to conduct the large therefore, to beg for freer" trade with foreign business to foreign countries stated in these tables. countries. Whatever capital, labour, and land can If the colonies only purchased from our manufac-produce, we may obtain; but it is essential to the turers in the same proportion as our foreign customers, wages at home would be smaller than their present rate, and our operatives would have less work. If our emigration had been directed to the colonies instead of chiefly to the United States, any one may see how much larger this year would have been the sale of our goods-not so much by consignment as by orders; and that to no inconsiderable extent our operatives would have earned higher wages. If means had been adopted to render our growth of cotton a colonial process, as completely as the growth of wool, has become, that material would have been paid for less by gold and more by goods than has been the case in our dealings with the United States for many years. If, as the past cannot be remedied, care were taken of these matters for the time to come, the advantage to our population would be soon apparent, and the colonies would become to us sources of national strength and increased trade. Some parties will allege that we unduly foster and protect colonial trade; but there is not an atomic fact in all that supposition. The colonies have no advantage in buying or selling with this country, but one kind of them have disadvantages. Our statesmen destroyed the sugar growing colonies-not by emancipation, but by compelling them to supply their productions at the price of interests of our home population; to those of the high wages party; for the mutual intercourse of the different sections of this empire; for the proposals of the peace party; for the purposes of the war party, if there be one; for the benefit of the operative, of the merchant, of the farmer, or the landowners whose sons may become planters; for all who have labour to hire, money to spend, skill to counsel; for the manufacturer who seeks an outlet for goods; for the missionary who travels to sell the truth without price; that these great possessions, waiting, and as it were wearying for labour, should be a knitted, and not remain a loose bundle of States. The colonists are perfectly entitled to a central and Imperial representation. They have a right to be consulted in all questions respecting peace or war; in all laws relating to commercial purposes; in all means for facilitating intercourse; in the assimilation of measures, and moneys, and weights; and in the means of employing among them both capital and labour on equitable terms. We can only endeavour to familiarise the public with an idea which must be realised, unless the colonies are hereafter to imitate the States, and become opponents sometimes, rivals always, to the home country. That consummation, which a few politicians complacently expect, would be alike injurious to our colonial and domestic population. | south and west. It is the plan adopted, so far as To the latter it would prove one means more of depreciating labour, while it would continue necessarily the system of emigration that produces a waste of labour and morality in the colonies, of labour and morality at home, crosses the course of nature, impedes the progress of population here and there, and draws on emigration so many dark dashes and strokes that spectators wonder whether its pages have more marks of blessings or of curses. We neither propose an original, nor an Utopian plan. It is the scheme which has formed all great nations. England was once seven states; once before it had many sevens. Upon the plan which we suggest, the United States have spread to the cramped freedom and limited institutions will admit, in Algiers by France. It is the scheme on which Russia grows, with all the difference neces sarily between despotism and liberty. It suggests the extension of our empire, rather than the formation of new states; with new feelings, interests, passions, and prejudices. And it secures at once material and moral advantages, which no other measure, open to this country, could win; not the least, perhaps, being our gradual independence of, and therefore withdrawal from continental quarrels, but it is a measure that may become too late in several cases, and once too late, it is late and lost for ever, since the opportunity that passes away can never more be recalled. POETS AND POETRY. THE POEMS OF HEINE,* translated by Edgar have been the subjects of strict discipline in All the poems of Henry Heine have been translated by Mr. Bowring, and are published in the present volume. We admire the industry and talent of the translator, whose capabilities for that work are hereditary. He has followed the original metres in his translation, and has thus rendered his work more difficult than it might have been by another mode. We do not deny the poetical genius of Heine, and yet we do not admire his works. Every poem displays a cynical sneer without the effective power of Burns or Byron in satire. The religious indifference of the man came out in all his writings. Perhaps no class of men are more likely to think lightly, or write profanely of religion than those who London: Longman and Co. 1 vol. pp. 553. Unhappily, WEDDED LOVE. BY JAMES CARGILL GUTHRIE.* The title of this poem amply explains its character. It is a domestic poem on the domestic subject. No other topic, perhaps, is better fitted for that class of quiet simple poetry which the reader likes better after he has gone over it twice or thrice, than on its first perusal. The cares and griefs and joys of a family and home give great scope to the poet who comprehends them. many of the poets have had a large share of the griefs, and not long periods of joy, perhaps, in their own experience. It may just possible that not a few of the class do not work rightly to avoid the one and procure the other. That remark has no application to the author of this volume, who is perfectly qualified to describe life among the comfor table middle-classes who form a strong pillar in the state. A noble spirit runs througs all his verses; such a spirit as draws it * London: Partridge and Co. 1 vol. pp. 147. be strength from the highest source, and is not We sat at breakfast in the Manse, The roses, nodding with the breeze, A fair terrestrial paradise; All kind escorted on my way, I then was thinking of a bride. A soft voice whispered, "Would I take Her eyes long-lashed suffused with tears :- Ah! never more to meet again! So In painted scenes of this description, Mr. Guthrie excells, and among modern writers, he has taken in that department, high ground. It is far away from Strathmore, yet nobody who has seen the place, would fail to name this village; Sweet village! long to thee be spared Thy cherished, simple, rural charms, Of Goths' and Vandals' dire alarms. Of more than ancient, classic fame; Maintain thy ever honoured name. See our new grand Cathedral Church, Its richly sculptured gothic porch; Antique old tile-roofed church, the be. A few lines farther on would give the "identification." Oft 'mid the haunts of men I've seen, The peerless vale that I adore; Thou'rt just the same, my own dear " How," And classic land of lordly Glamms. But wedded love has its cares, and these are of them. A boy lay on his downy couch, All softly, sweetly sleeping, He'll never know the countless tears His tears may flow when sad he thinks The hour appointed long is past His mother wakes him not, she dreads O! grudge her not the luxury- Each look the last, her darling boy His curls are golden, and his brow Long leans she o'er him; oft she cries, "Oh! mother, half the day is done!" She clasps him to her heart, and cries, These lines have no ambitious effort to mark them. They contain apparently nothing, neither of thought nor of word, that any person would not have held, or said, in the circumstances; but read them again, they bear repitetion, and find that they belong to the verses which live in the mind, it's all so natural and so true-it happened one morning with many readers, just one morning of life and no more than one-and perhaps, years passed away, and the young eyes had grown dry and "hard," ere they looked again on the careful packer-or "they never met." We admire greatly, this little volume, and it is one of those that can be recommended without any exceptions, or buts, or cautions, or differences. It is good all through. Back from Newington and its new and old church, and the London northern suburbs, at the end however, the author's thoughts wander again to his father's mill, to Strathmore and its many streams. * ERNEST, THE PILGRIM, a dramatic poem by J. W. King. The poem is cast in England, and in our modern times. In many passages it displays fine feeling and great freshness of expression and thought. We cannot trace the outline of the story, because it would occupy more space than we can afford. The pilgrim soldier had travelled far and wide beside his colours, He had been through the Crimea, up the Alma, and on the crags of Inkerman. It was May-day morn in Langley Dale when he came home again; and the "drama" opens with a description of May-day celebrities, only maintained in rural parishes and pastoral villages, and Mr. King, who knows all these things well, describes them well. The pilgrim soldier is not however the true pilgrim, but "Ernest," as the title says, is the hero of the drama. The The * London: Partridge and Co. 1 vol., p. 227. plot is very simple. He is poor, so is the soldier's daughter whom he loves. Therefore, Ernest seeks fortune in London, and in the meantime the Lord of the Manor endeavours to win the wanderer,s bride to his own ways, and fails. The story is constructed of this material, and its value is in the reflections of the different personages as they move over the stage. Here is the night before and the morning of the Alma : In daisy dells glad children played, Noon, panting like a weary steed, We piled our arms by a pleasant stream, And the evening followed the morning: Terrible shot and murderous shell There are many social truths and political truths in this volume, and many quaint descriptions of old English manners, right pleasant to be seen or to be heard of. The author is well known now by his previous works, and "Ernest" will not detract from his fame. POEMS OF THE FIELDS AND THE TOWNS, by John Langford.* by John Langford.* We once noticed a London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 1 volume. volume of poetry under the title of the Come let us sing a merry stave, And having pledged the hearts we love, And sing a merry strain; With pleasant chat, and harmless jokes, So merry, merry, merry be, And sing a merry strain; ""Tis Christmas time again." THE EARLY PRIMROSE, by Clara Loud.* Canterbury is a metropolitan city, with the than broad and fair lands of Kent around it, so that we should have more literature from the men of Kent than they have recently sent into the world. This thin and neatly bound volume is creditable in the first place to the mechanical department of literature in Canterbury. Its contents are the "early primroses" of one lady in the cathedral city, who, without the aid of roaring cataracts or towering mountain peaks, writes sensible verses; and there is hope of all beginners wohse verses are "sensible." However, they are more thereby "sensible." It is just quite possible that the authoress does not comprehend her own capabilities. Many persons make mistakes of that kind. We are to copy some lines which have a practical purpose, and are rather in the sentimental turn. Yet we do not think Miss Loud so likely to excel in that class of verses as to write some day the counterpart of John Gilpin, and quite as good. She may not be entirely pleased at our saying so, but she should not have written "The Magpie in the Church," and two or more similar pieces, and we would not have fallen into the error. The world wants a little amuse Canterbury: Henry Chivers, 1 volume, pp. 96. ment with its truth occasionally, and it takes All, all are wrapt in slumber, save the faithful unto death, She hasteneth to meet him, and love lights her gentle eye; With a smile she welcomes him once more-a smile almost divine, Tho' his eye beams wildly on her, and his cheek is flushed with wine. Night after night she watches thus, pale grows that lovely cheek, Yet she never, never murmurs, tho' so feeble, faint and weak. And when at last she droopeth, when on a dying bed, For woman if she truly loves, is faithful unto death. TIMON AND OTHER POEMS* is a volume produced, to use his own phrase, by— A toiling poet proud to own the skill, in other words by a journeyman engineer at Brighton. The title "Timon" is a mistake, for And we cannot discover the slightest trace of Timonism in the book. Why call a poem intended to illustrate the struggles of indigent genius-Timon? Was not Timon immortalised by Shakespeare as a spendthrift, who having got through his own, and much doubtless of other people's money, turned misanthrope thereafter? What possible connec tion can there be between the hero of the first poem of this volume and Timon of Athens? why by giving a piece a bad name-we say it on the principle that "comparisons are odious"prejudice a possibly intending purchaser? The volume consists first of some six and thirty pages, more or less, of Spenserian stanzas headed Timon;" then of divers occasional poems, then of a five act drama entitled "The Compact," and finally of sundry prose sketches. "Timon" is a history of the early struggles of a poet, and every now and then seems to us to offer evidence that the author has read Beattie's Minstrel "-though the lives of the two youthful minstrels as painted by their respective delincators are utterly dissimilar. Mr. Powell's hero is a genius from his cradle, and having to earn his bread by labour as a mill-hand finds— * By J. H. Powell. London: Piper, Stephenson, and Spence. i vol. pp. 250. |