"Her thoughts submitted to his thought's con- | Seeing her broken beauty carried by

"Well she remembered how that soul was Some ragged wretch to rest and warm the inside.

It will be seen that we have not quoted from this volume a few choice passages, but illustrate the evenness of its music by citation of whatever passages best helped briefly to tell its story. The work is a perfect whole, artistic in the arrangement of those lights and shades of which the effect cannot be communicated by description. Wherever the taste has not been spoilt by a too artificial diet, Mrs. Norton's new poem will be received with the welcome that is accorded only to works that can brave through generations the assault of time.

The Children's Garland from the Best Poets. Selected and Arranged by Coventry Patmore. Macmillan and Co.

THIS is a little book most happily designed and executed. Why should young minds be fed with the doggerel rhyme usually poured out as the verse fit for children's ears and understand ing? The delicate music of Shakspeare's Sea dirge in The Tempest, or of Herrick's lines to the Daffodils, have their charm for a child of five or six years old. Our poetical literature is very rich in ballads and songs, pleasant and brief tales rhymed by true poets, or thoughts about the flowers, in which children delight, simple as they are beautiful and wise. With none of the didactic purpose of a schoolroom "speaker," but for the first time with a design of giving to young readers a pleasure book of true poetry, this volume has been designed by Mr. Coventry Patmore, himself a poet with refinement of domestic feeling in his verse that qualifies him for the undertaking. The true poetry that can be felt by child as well as man, must needs be of the best.

Mr. Patmore has woven his Children's Garland with a true and fair sense of what that is good will please the young and the illiterate, and so he has produced a pleasure book for all the English world, a choice volume not only for the nursery bookcase but for the table of every day laborer who has learnt how to read, and a bright fireside companion to the scholar in his hour of rest.-Examiner.

dotes, noxious emanations, snake bites, drowning and asphyxia, stings of insects, and lime in the eye, with a thousand other ills to which the flesh is heir, are all treated of in so clear and practical a manner as almost to preclude the possibility of a mistake. While fully agreeing with the philosophie dictum that absence of body is very often better than presence of mind, we readily admit that when the former alternative is unattainable, the latter is extremely desirable, and that in no way can it be more certainly secured than by the knowledge of the right thing to be done in any emergency. This useful information is supplied at the cost of one shilling in the brochure published by Messrs. Cassell and Co.-Spectator.

Notes on Fields and Cattle, from the Diary of an Amateur Farmer. By the Rev. W. Holt Beever, M.A., Oxon. Chapman and Hall.

A FUNNY dog is the Rev. W. Holt Beever, M.A., Oxon. His spirits are exuberant, and carry him far away beyond the ordinary bounds of common sense and literary decorum. But, however objectionable his style, his matter is unexceptionable, and practical farmers of the longest experience will be the first to acknowl edge the soundness of his teaching. His scope is sufficiently wide. He treats of cows, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry. He knows all about reaping, thrashing, and haymaking. Equally Handbook for Emergencies. Cassell, Petter, and at home is he in the dairy and in the stud, and is generally "well up "in all that pertains to Galpin. agricultural pursuits. And, we dare venture to say, he is none the less respected by his parishioners because he happens to be familiar with all that is most important in their eyes, and that enters into their every-day existence. The book

IN less compass than a hundred pages we are tanght how to avoid disagreeable accidents, how to act when they cannot be avoided, and what to do after they have occurred. Explosions in collieries, collisions at sea, accidents by lightning, fires, and railways, poisons and their anti-s a good book, but the style is abominable.

Spectator.

TEMPER OF THE ENGLISH PRESS OF 4 not flatter ourselves that all difficulties and

JANUARY.

By the 4 January the British Public had received so much unofficial information, that the funds had risen to their former state, and a general belief prevailed' that America did not desire war with England!

We copy from our political and literary weeklies, a few paragraphs to show how the change was received :

The Examiner says: "The prompt and vigorous preparations of our Government have dissipated a vast deal of delusion, and compelled some wholesome reflections on the consequences of a war with England, superadded to the arduous struggle with the South. Indeed it was from the first sufficiently certain that the States would have to make choice of one war, but would not saddle themselves with two, for what Macbeth says of wives is certainly true of wars, that two at a time there's no nation can bear. The only question was whether they would close, or suspend their contest with the South, and turn their hands against England; or whether they would prefer conceding what is due to us in order to remain able to direct all their powers against the fraternal foe."

dangers of the disturbance of peace are diswhich has in it many crooked sticks. Beposed of. We are not yet out of the wood, hind the Trent affair looms black and large the blockade question, which France is resolved to bring to an. issue. We may be obliged by truth to agree with her as to the principle and facts, precisely as she has agreed with us in the Trent affair; but as we proposed to act without her co-operation in that instance, so as to the blockade we may leave her to act without ours. For it would have a bad look if we were to raise one cause of contention immediately after another was disposed of, and especially as our conduct might be suspected of being influenced by commercial interests. France can well go alone in this matter, and we have heard it well suggested that with a very good grace she might suggest to the American Government that a truce with the South for a year or so might dispose of the difficulty about the blockade, and give the two parties time to cool, and to consider what is for their real and permanent interests without any prejudice to their respective claims, or detriment to their powers, if it should be their final determination to resume hostilities."

So it seems that England looks to France for the further proceedings which it would be indecent for her to take after our frank concessions.

In another article on the discussion of

Neutral Rights which preceded "The Trent outrage," The Examiner says :—

"Arbitration is good for questionable facts and principles, but here the facts are undisputed, and the principle about as clear as 'Thou shalt not steal.' If a man takes your purse from you on the highway you are not satisfied with apology without restitution, nor disposed to submit the wrong to "If Ireland indeed were in revolt from arbitration. Capt. Wilkes dispensed with north to south, from east to west, the adjudication when he committed his illegal Queen's authority thrown off throughout the violence on board the Trent, and what he land, and not a single port of free will in passed over then cannot in any shape be had the possession of Her Majesty's Governrecourse to now, with prudence and dignity. ment, there could be a case for the mutual "We are not without misgivings that the engagement for which Mr. Seward contends. moderated language of the better part of the But the Kingdom of England is what it American press is pitched upon the assump-calls itself, an United Kingdom, and if we tion that England will be satisfied with dis- desired to accommodate Mr. Seward with a avowals of any insulting intention, a protes- reciprocity we could not contrive to make tation of respect, and fine phrases of peace such a split here as has been brought about and good-will. But the only reparation is in America, for our differences bear to those the restoration of the prisoners. To imag- on the other side of the Atlantic the proine that there can be any other friendly ad- portion that one of our petty rills of waterjustment of the dispute is to imagine a vain falls bears to Niagara. We have had rething. Our impression is that the concession bellion indeed in Ireland, but the worst has will be made, and perhaps with a bitter never embraced the whole population, and compliment to us on our improved under- the last, which was expected in America to standing of the law of nations through the establish the Independence of Ireland, was lessons the Americans themselves have incul- put down by a party of police of the strength cated, the principle we uphold now being the of a corporal's guard in the memorable very one maintained against us by Madison field of the Widow Cormack's cabbage-garin 1812. But supposing the affair of the den. Trent to be satisfactorily settled, we must

"Whenever the seven millions of Ireland

shall have separated themselves as complete- risen between the two nations will be at once dispelled. The Northerners will lose the delusion that England dreads war with them; we shall lose the delusion that they are seeking for war with us."

ly from the Queen's Government as the Southern States have done from the Federal Union, we admit that the American Government will have the full right to hold towards us the same course that we now pursue toward them. We shall have nothing to complain of when they recognize belligerents in seven millions of people who have thrown off their allegiance, and set up their own Government and held their ground against Her Majesty's arms, and if our blockade of their ports be so ineffectual that we are obliged to resort to the expedient of choking up forever the channels of the Shannon, we shall not even have the effrontery to protest if the Government of Washington should declare the blockade at an end as inefficacious, and the means adopted to eke out what it wants in legitimate force a device revolting to humanity and outraging the whole civilized world."

66

'England desired no war with them when they were still united, and desires it still less now when every shot to be fired must help to establish an empire founded on the basis of slavery, but not even for that great cause can we tolerate international anarchy. The crisis has this time passed, and if the Americans will but display habitually the moderation and gravity they seem to have shown in this exceptional case, they may have years of peace to recruit from the wounds which civil war, however just in its origin or wise in its prosecution, is only to certain to inflict."

The Economist says: "Some persons have been inclined to fear that the American Government was itself disposed to war, beThe Government of Washington did not cause it has not surrendered the commisexpress the opinion of the civilized world, sioners after the private, but before the forwhen England blew from the mouths of mal, communication of the English demand. her cannon her Sepoy prisoners. By the They think that such an immediate delivery way, when we read the charges against our would have been more dignified than a reGovernment, and especially Mr. Seward, of luctant delivery after consideration and dedesiring to get up a war with England, as chosen this course, he does not intend to lay, and infer that as Mr. Lincoln has not an excuse for giving way to the Rebels ;comply with our demand. But it is dubious and when we see how the Billingsgate Vo-whether such an immediate surrender would cabulary is exhausted against the ferocity of the "American Mob," which keeps the President uncertain whether to yield to it or to the British lion, we are sometimes inclined to doubt whether the Sepoys were not belied in all cases, as we already know that they were in general. We are in the condition of the National Intelligencer, whose faith in Dr. Russell's narratives of affairs in the Crimea and in India, has been shaken by his letters on the American troubles.

The Spectator says: "A few peace-speeches have been made during the week at Brighton, Bradford, Birmingham, and other towns, but the speakers all allow that they are ready for war if the American Government support Captain Wilkes. Their general tone reminds us a little of Heber Kimball, the Mormon Elder, who, when reminded by an American officer that as a religious man he ought to turn the other cheek to the smiter, replied, 'I acknowledge the command, I will turn the other cheek, but if he hits it, I'll give him hell.'"

"If they surrender Slidell and Mason, the dispute, so far from embittering the relations between the two countries, will tend greatly to their improvement. The mist which has

now be very dignified. If Messrs. Mason and Slidell had been released before the requisition of the English Government was known in America, the position of the Presiniably dignified. But there is little difference, if any, between yielding to a formal demand which is avowedly public, and yielding to the same demand informally delivered. Probably the most dignified course at Mr. Lincoln's disposal is a reference of the legal claims of England to some legal adviser-to some court or law officer. If he wishes to surrender the commissioners, he will easily obtain an opinion that they ought to be surrendered."

dent and of America would have been unde

"A war with the United States would at once have brought relief and comparative prosperity to Lancashire. But a war would have cost us probably forty or fifty millions sterling each year of its duration. We may well afford to spend at least a considerable portion of this saved sum on the famished population who are famished because we have been enabled to save it. It will be cheaper, wiser, more worthy of a civilized nation to provide Lancashire with food gratis, if need be, than to have gone to war that she might have cotton wherewith to buy food."

"Some uneasiness and considerable nat