vain dreams. It cites the guilty to come forth from their dark concealment, and from the hidden haunts of vice; and commands that the passions, and feelings, and most secret thoughts of all should be made manifest in the clear and blazing light of eternity. It calls on the pale spectral forms of the dead to arise from the grave, and gathering their mouldering or mouldered bones, to stand before the Almighty. It bids the world to pause in its course, the fountain of life to cease to flow, and time to arrest its flight; and it decrees the cessation of every sound except

That trumpet's tones

Which peal from yonder everlasting zones. This celestial summons is a fine portion of the drama, and is not far inferior to Campbell's celebrated poem, "The Last Man."

Our author, however, notwithstanding the Archangel's command, does not permit all sounds to be immediately silenced by the overpowering blast of the fatal trumpet, for a dark shadow is seen to arise from a grave of appa rently very ancient date, and it is recognized as Pontius Pilate, his contemporary, the everliving Jew.

He tells her that there they would be sure to be alone, that the sleeping dead around could be no tell-tale witnesses of their love, and A conversation, filling eighteen or nineteen that no living being would intrude on them pages, ensues, in the course of which Pilate deamidst these forgotten tombs. Just then, how-mands from his mundane friend the fate of ever, Ahasuerus is discovered; he speaks to them of a better world, and assists them to escape from the churchyard when a crowd of people are heard approaching, headed by "the Antichrist." Who this Antichrist may be is not explicitly defined; but this personage and the Wandering Jew enter into a long theological discussion, which is at length broken in upon by some unearthly sound.

The Antichrist, gazing wildly round, exclaims:

Whence come these tones?

Ahasuerus. Hark! From the skySeek grace in time-ere Time shall die! Antichrist. The trumpet's blast? Ahasuerus. Yes! 'Tis the trumpet's call; That to the judgment-seat doth summon all

Judæa and of Rome; and is surprised to find that he has been wrapt in the oblivion of death for more than a thousand years. Still more amazed is he to hear of the long life that the shoemaker of Jerusalem had endured, not enjoyed; and he is astounded when informed that Jesus of Nazareth-whom he had condemned to be put to death on the cross-he who had borne the crown of thorns-was indeed the Christ. Pilate hears with intense terror that He is coming to judge the world; and again, as of old, asks, "What is truth?"

To this the aged Jew-or Christian, as he would be more correctly termed replies, "Christ is truth!" Ahasuerus then inquires of Pontius Pilate with eager curiosity about death and the grave. Pilate at length vanishes, and presently after a spirit appears, whom Ahasuerus addresses the same anxious

to

question, "What is death?" And the spirit
tells him :-

* DION SHO 20 103 dedi bowoli ed
It is a sleep which knows no dream-W
A deep, unbroken, calm repose A
Where neither thought nor image glows,
But in the mind ideas seem
Extinguished; and no visions sweep
Before the rayless eye-the ear
earned
Catches no sound. No joy-no fear
Can break on that mysterious sleep M
Whose continuity no time
Can e'er rexhaust. Yet it is rife
With the blest germ of future life
Which God will perfect in yon worlds

sublime.

1

1.

The spirit assures Ahasuerus that they shall, The angel choir still sing; but the voices meet in the invisible world, and, disappearing, seem more remote, and become fainter and leaves him much comforted. He then wanders fainter. The old man steps into the grave, on farther among the graves, and comes sud- and chanting a hymn to the Redeemer who denly on one that is open, as it were, ready had mercifully withdrawn the curse from him to receive him. Not appalled by its depth-who had pened the grave for him—and perand gloom, he looks wistfully into it; and af-mitted him at length, through the silent gates ter again praying for pardon, and to be re- of death, to pass to eternal repose-he diesleased from the burden of life, he is about to with these last words on his lips. descend into the grave, when he hears a chorus of angels singing:

Close at length thy weary eyes,
To ope them far above yon skies.
Thy long probation now is over,
Winged cherubs round thee hover,
Thy parting spirit to convey
Upwards, on its Heaven-bound way.
Angels from that heaven are nigh
To receive thy latest sigh.
Thy life, at length, is at an end,
Death waits thee like a welcome friend.
Thou mayst at length sink into rest-
Till in the regions of the blest,
From earth, the grave, and death set free-
Thou enterest Eternity!

The Danish poet has done wisely in not presuming to follow "den Evige Jöde beyond the determination of his fearful mortal career. He has done well in not attempting, like M. Edgar Quinet, to portray the last judgment, and to put the words of a finite being into the mouth of the Almighty. The most elevated sentiments-the most lofty diction, of which the human mind and human language are capable, would not be equal to this flight of the imagination; and Paludan-Müller does not the less evince the power of his genius by showing his knowledge that in this world it must be-THUS FAR SHALT THOU GO, AND NO FARTHER.

BALAKLAVA.

What master hand shall set on the right path
These our blind guides, that wander to and fro?
What pen shall write the nation's helpless wrath?
What cry shall speak its woe?

That noble army, that so stirred our pride

So stout, so well equipped, so trim arrayed
Melts like a snow-wreath from a warm hill-side,
And we can give no aid!

That starving army haunts us night and day;
Clouding our gladness, deepening our care;
By our warm hearths-"Alas, no fire have they!"
Snow falls "'tis falling there!"

We strive to chase the phantom: still it bides;
Stretches gaunt hands between us and our meat;
In our warm beds, lies freezing at our sides;
Trips up our dancing feet.

Why hauntest thou us, grim spectre ? 'Twas not

crown

But what is She who wears it unto you? You raise up ministers and pluck them down; What you will, they must do.

"If they put leadership in baby hands,

'Tis that you wink, or slumber, or approve; If, like an iron wall, Routine still stands ; You will, and it must move.

"If Aristocracy's cold shadow fall

Across the soldier's path, to you is given
The might to rend away that ancient pall,
And let in light of Heaven!

"I was the People's soldier. In their name
I stood against the Czar in battle's hour,
If I, not he, be baffled, rest the shame
With you, that have the power!"

Punch.

From the New Monthly Magazine

plies difference of view in minds differently conMBS. JAMESON'S COMMON-PLACE BOOK.*stituted, or at different stages of progress on the same general route.

Mrs. Jameson avers that never, in any one of MRS. JAMESON has long ago secured to herself the many works she has given to the public, has the certainty of a constant, hearty, and respect- she aspired to teach-"being myself," she says, ful welcome. Her presence is ever felt to be re-a learner in all things;" and in sending forth freshing, elevating, bettering. She humanizes this selection of thoughts, memories, and fanand refines the mind-makes us feel the world is cies she professes herself guided by the wishes too much with us, and allures, to a brighter, if of others, who deemed it not wholly uninterest not always another. ing or profitless to trace the path, sometimes 185 Especially in this latest work of hers we vious enough, of an "inquiring spirit, even en by the recognize such a spiritualizing influence; it is little pebbles dropped as vestiges by the way-side. rich in words of wisdom, deeply felt, calmly pon- She recognizes one way only of doing good in dered, and often exquisitely expressed; the beau- a book "so supremely egotistical and subjecttiful book of a beautiful writer. Within and ive;" namely, that it may, like conversation with without, in the spirit and in the letter, by the a friend, open up sources of sympathy and revalue of the text and the adornments of letter flection; may excite to argument, agreement or press and illustrative designs, it is such a gift disagreement; and, like every spontaneous utbook as may be well called pleasant to the sight, terance of thought out of an earnest mind, which and to be desired to make one wise. hers emphatically is-may suggest far higher and better thoughts to higher and more productive minds.

"If I had not the humble hope," she adds, "of such a possible result, instead of sending these memoranda to the printer, I should have them thrown into the fire; for I lack that creative faculty which can work up the teachings of heartsorrow and world experience into attractive forms of fiction or of art; and having no intention of leaving any such memorials to be published after my death, they must have gone into the fire the only alternative left."

Commend us to that sire, as of approved taste and feeling, who should select it, before a host of glittering "annuals," as the gift book for his heart's darling; and to that bridegroom, as an intelligent man and a derserving, who should put it into the hands and press it on the interest of his betrothed. The external grace and the inward excellence of the volume remind us of what is said of the "virtuous woman, whose price is far above rubies," in the words of King Lemuel, the creed that his mother taught him; that she maketh herself clothing of silk and purple-which is good; and, that she openeth her Such is her modest apology or explanation, in mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the publishing what she seems, sensitive in her relaw of kindness-which is far better. Wisdom, spect for her public, to apprehend liable to susand the law of kindness, are eminently, pre-emi-picion, in limine, of book-making, " presumptunently characteristic of the ethical and critical ous or careless. For many years she has been writings of Mrs. Jameson. accustomed, we learn, to make a memorandum Not that this present volume contains nothing, of any thought which may have come across or indeed little, that will be accepted by think-her-if pen and paper were at hand; and to ing people without demur or gainsaying. On mark and remark, any passage in a book the contrary, it is, in page after page, provoca- may have excited either a sympathetic or tive of hesitation and question-frequently of pathetic feeling. This collection of notes acvery qualified assent, and sometimes of absolute cumulated insensibly from day to day, dissent.

The volumes on Shakspeare's Women, on Mrs. Jameson is a reader of Emerson, and Sacred and Legendary Art, etc., "sprung from the Westminster and Prospective Reviews, and seed thus lightly and casually sown," which the quotes them with zest, and is a gentle free author hardly knew how, grew up and expandthinker on her own account, and quotes her owned into a regular, readable form, with a beginfree thinkings too. Hers is the common-place ning, a middle, and an end. What was she to book of no common-place woman, but of one do, however, with the fragments that remainnaturally and habitually meditative; given to cdκλασμάτων without beginspeculate in her quest of wisdom, addicted to ning, and without end-unte ȧpxny unte tes guesses at truth, and frank in the expression of exovra-links of a hidden or a broken chain ?the conclusions she has arrived at, or the sug- Unwilling to decide for herself, she resolved to gestive queries which are all she can throw out. abide by advice of friends; and hinc illa delicia: With this cast of mind, and independence of hence this charming" Common-place Book of spirit, it cannot be but that from time to time Thoughts, Memories and Fancies"-by she should produce results too debatable for her man of pure and aspiring thoughts, and tender readers to acquiesce in-indeed, indolent ac- memories, and graceful fancies. quiescence is the last thing she would ask or be The thirty pages devoted to what she calls grateful for, on the part of those she confers" A Revelation of Childhood," will, by many, be with; and the very fact of suggestiveness im- considered the most interesting passage in the Buvertes. Jordbook. It is a delightsome piece of autobiography, A Common place Book of thoughts, Memories, valuable from its psychological character, and the and Fancies, original and Selected. By Mrs. Jame- pervading philosophical tone of its brief narrative. With Illustrations and Etching. Longman, It is the seriously indited remonstrance against educational fallacies, abuses and anomalies, of

son.

1854.

one who pleads for childhood and reverences its | it-and as for earthly counsel or comfort I never possibilities, of one who deeply feels that we had either when most wanted. do not sufficiently consider that our life is "not made up of separate parts, but is one-is a progressive whole. When we talk of leaving our childhood behind us, we might as well say that the river flowing onward to the sea had left the fountain behind."

She further represents herself as having had, "like most children," confused ideas about truth, more distinct and absolute ones about honorto tell a lie was wicked, and, by her infant code of morals, worse than wicked-dishonorable.But she had no compunction about telling ficMrs. Jameson here puts together some recol- tions, in which practice she disdains "Ferdinand lections of her own child-life, not, she says, be- Mendez Pinto, that liar of the first magnitude," cause it was in any respect an exceptional or re- as nothing in comparison to herself. Not markable existence, but for a reason exactly the naturally obstinate, she records how she was reverse, because it was like that of many child punished as such-whereby hangs a tale well ren; many children having at least come under worth noting for the sake of the moral. An esher notice as thriving or suffering from the same pecial cause of childish suffering again, was fear, or similar unseen causes, even under external" fear of darkness and supernatural influences" conditions and management every way dissimi--at first experienced in vague terrors, "hauntlar. She describes herself as not being " partic-ing, thrilling, stifling afterwards in varied larly" anything, as a child, unless "particularly form, the most permanent being the ghost in naughty;" and that she gives on the authority Hamlet, derived from an old engraving: "O, of elders who assured of it twenty times a day, that spectre! for three years it followed me up rather than from any conviction of her own; and down the dark staircase, or stood by my bed; looking back, she is not conscious of having per- only the blessed light had power to exorcise it. petrated more than the usual amount of so-called Another grim presence not to be put by, was the "mischief" which every lively, active child per- figure of Bunyan's Apollyon looming over Chrispetrates between five and ten years old.-tian, also due to an old engraving. And worst She had the usual desire to know, and the usual dislike to learn; like her coevals she loved fairy tales, and hated French excrcises. But she goes on to say, "but not of what I learned, but of what I did not learn; not of what they taught me, but of what they could not teach me; not of what was open, apparent, manageable, but of the under current, the hidden, the unmanaged or unmanageable, I have to speak."

of all were certain phantasms without shape," like the spirit that passed before the seer, which stood still, but he could not discern the form thereof, and inarticulate voices, whose burden was the more oppressive because so unintelligible-voices as emphatic in sound as indistinct in utterance.

These were the dread accessories of darkness to the imaginative child; the thoughtful woman's Very early memories she thus brings before account of which will excite sympathetic recolus, with a sacred freshness and vivid reality; lections in many a woman, and man too, and for she can testify, as so many have testified al- may avail to ward off increase of suffering from ready, that as we grow old the experiences of in- many a child. Mr. Leigh Hunt has wisely said fancy come back upon us with a strange vivid- that such things are no petty ones to a sensitive ness; a period indeed there is, when the overflow-child, when relating how himself was the victim ing, tumultuous life of our youth rises up between of an elder brother's delight to "aggravate"us and those first years-"but as the torrent sub- the big boy taking advantage of the little one's sides in its bed we can look across the impassa-horror of the dark, and (like Mrs. Jameson in ble gulf to that haunted fairy land which we shall this also) of dreadful faces gathered from illusnever more approach, and never forget!" She trated books-which brotherly attentions helped can remember in infancy being sung to sleep, largely, he says in his Autobiography, "to morand even the tune which was sung to her, and she begs "blessings on the voice that sang it!" She recalls the afflictions he endured at six years old from the fear of not being loved where she had attached herself, and from the idea that another was preferred before her-such anguish it was, she says, "as had nearly killed me," and which left a deeper impression than childish passions usually do; and one so far salutary, that in after life she guarded herself against the approaches of that hateful, deformed, agonizing thing which men call 'jealousy,' as she would from an attack of cramp or cholera.""

bidize all that was weak in my temperament, and cost me many a bitter night." By day, Mrs. Jameson describes her little self as having been "not only fearless, but audacious, inclined to defy all power and brave all danger," provided always the danger could be seen. She remembers volunteering to lead the way through a herd of cattle (among which was a dangerous bull, the terror of the neighborhood) armed only with a little stick; but first she said the Lord's Prayer fervently. In the ghastly night," she adds, "I never prayed; terror stifled prayer. These visionary sufferings, in some form or other, pursued With a good temper, she was endued with the me till I was nearly twelve years old. If I had capacity of "strong, deep, silent resentment, and not possessed a strong constitution and a strong a vindictive spirit of rather a peculiar kind”— understanding, which rejected and contemned the latter a source for several years of intense, my own fears, even while they shook me, I had untold suffering, of which no one but the suf- been destroyed. How much weaker children sufferer was aware: "I was left to settle it; and fer in this way I have since known; and have my mind righted itself I hardly know how; not certainly by cligious influences-they passed over my mind, and did not at the time sink into

known how to bring them help and strength, through sympathy and knowledge, the sympathy that soothes and does not encourage-the

knowledge that dispels, and does not suggest, the evil."

satirist, and taught her so impressively how easy and vulgar is the habit of sarcasm, and how In her own case, the power of these midnight much nobler it is to be benign and merciful, that terrors vanished gradually before what she calls she was, by the recoil, "in great danger of falla more dangerous infatuation-the propensity to ing into the opposite extreme-of seeking the reverie; from ten years old to fifteen, she lived a beautiful even in the midst of the corrupt and double existence; like Hartley Coleridge with the repulsive." "Pity," she continues, "a large his dreamland Ejuxria, like Thomas de Quincey element in my composition, might have easily with his dreamland Gombroon, she imagined degenerated into weakness, threatening to subnew worlds, and peopled them with life, and vert hatred of evil in trying to find excuses for crowded them with air-castles, and constructed it; and whether my mind has ever completely for the denizens a concatenated series of duly de- righted itself, I am not sure." Nor must we veloped action and carefully evolved adventures; forget to add, as characteristic of the quality and this habit of reverie, so systematical, so of her child-life, her sensibility to music; and methodical, grew upon her with such strength, how Mrs. Arkwright used to entrance her that at times she scarcely took cognizance of with her singing, so that the songster's very outward things and real persons, and, when pun- footfall made the tiny listener tremble with ished for idleness by solitary confinement, ex- expectant rapture. But her voice!-it has ulted in the sentence as giving thrice-welcome scope for uninterrupted day-dreams. She was always a princess-heroine in the disguise of a knight, a sort of Clorinda or Britomart, going about to redress the wrongs of the poor, fight giants, and kill dragons; or founding a society in some far-off solitude or desolate island, innocent of tears, of tasks, and of laws,-of caged birds and of tormented kittens.

charmed hundreds since; whom has it ever moved to a more genuine passion of delight than the little child that crept silent and tremulous to her side? And she was fond of mefond of singing to me, and, it must be confessed, fond also of playing these experiments on me. The music of Paul and Virginia' was then in vogue, and there was one air-a very simple air -in that opera, which, after the first few bars, always made me stop my ears and rush out of the room."

From her earliest days she can remember her delight in the beauties of nature-foiled but not dulled by a much regretted change of abode from With her wonted candor, and didactic intent, country to town-which intense sense of beauty Mrs. Jameson owns, that she became at last gave the first zest to poetry-making Thomson's aware that this musical flight was sometimes Seasons" a favorite book before she could yet done to please her parents, or amuse or interest understand one-half of it-and St. Pierre's "In- others by the display of such vehement emotion; dian Cottage," and the "Oriental intoxication" her infant conscience became perplexed between of the "Arabian Nights." Shakspeare she had the reality of the feeling and the exhibition of read all through ere she was ten years old, hav-it; people are not always aware, she remarksing begun him at seven; the Tempest and Cym- and if a truism, it will stand another readingbeline were the plays she liked, and knew the of the injury done to children by repeating bebest. Shakspeare was, indeed, on the forbidden fore them the things they say, or describing the shelf; but the most genial and eloquent of his things they do; words and actions, spontaneous female commentators-not to throw in, as some and unconscious, become thenceforth artificial will think we might, the worser half of creation and conscious. "I can speak of the injury -protests once and again, with an emphatic [thus] done to myself between five and eight "bless him!" that Shakspeare did her no harm. years old. There was some danger of my beBut of some religious tracts and stories by Han- coming a precocious actress-danger of permanah More, the loan of a parish clerk, she as-nent mischief such as I have seen done to other serts: It is most certain that more moral mis- children-but I was saved by the recoil of rechief was done to me by some of these than by sistance and resentment excited in my mind," all Shakspeare's plays together. Those so-called From beginning to (too speedy) end, this "Repious tracts first introduced me to a knowledge velation of Childhood," however uneventful of the vices of vulgar life, and the excitements in outward circumstance, is so gracefully and of a vulgar religion-the fear of being hanged genially told, with such engaging frankness, and the fear of hell became coexistent in my and fresh-hearted carnestness, and sagacious mind." self-analysis, that we hope some day to read other and fuller autobiographic sketches in the same fair autograph.

She adds her conviction, that she read the Bible too carly, too indiscriminately, and too irreverently; the "letter" of the Scriptures being There are one or two isolated scraps of the familiarized to her by sermonizing and dogma- same personal and subjective interest occurring tizing, long before she could enter into the "spir- in the varied pages of the Common-Place Book. it." But the histories out of the Bible (the Para- For this interest, as part "revelations" of inner bles especially) were enchanting to her, though life, as shadows of idiosyncrasy, we quote the her interpretation of them was, in some instan- following: "Those are the killing griefs that do ces, the very reverse of correct or orthodox. not speak,' is true of some, not all characters. A tendency to become pert and satirical which There are natures in which the killing grief finds showed itself about this age (ten), was happily utterance while it kills; moods in which we cry checked by a good clergyman's seasonable narra- aloud, as the beast crieth, expansive not appealtion of a fine old Eastern fable, which gave ing. That is my own nature; so in grief or in wholesome pain to the conscience of the, young joy, I say as the birds sing :