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hidest thou in thy treasure-caves and cells,

      Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main?

      Pale glistening pearls and rainbow-coloured shells,

      Bright things which gleam unrecked of and in vain!

      Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea!

      We ask not such from thee.

      Yet more, the depths have more! – what wealth untold,

      Far down, and shining through their stillness, lies!

      Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold,

      Torn from ten thousand royal Argosies!

      Sweep o'er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main!

      Earth claims not these again.

      Yet more, the depths have more! – thy waves have rolled

      Above the cities of a world gone by!

      Sand hath filled up the palaces of old,

      Sea-weed o'ergrown the halls of revelry —

      Dash o'er them, ocean! in thy scornful play!

      Man yields them to decay.

      Yet more! the billows and the depths have more!

      High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast!

      They hear not now the booming waters roar,

      The battle-thunders will not break their rest.

      Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave!

      Give back the true and brave.

      Give back the lost and, lovely! – those for whom

      The place was kept at board and hearth so long!

      The prayer went up through midnight's breathless gloom,

      And the vain yearning woke midst festal song.

      Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'er-thrown,

      But all is not thine own.

      To thee the love of woman hath gone down;

      Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head —

      O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown;

      Yet must thou hear a voice – Restore the dead!

      Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee!

      Restore the dead, thou sea!

      But if she loved in nature, pre-eminently, the beautiful and the serene – or what she could represent as such to her imagination – it was otherwise with human life. Here the stream of thought ran always in the shade, reflecting in a thousand shapes the sadness which had overshadowed her own existence. Yet her sadness was without bitterness or impatience – it was a resigned and Christian melancholy; and if the spirit of man is represented as tossed from disappointment to disappointment, there is always a brighter and serener world behind, to receive the wanderer at last. She writes Songs for Summer Hours, and the first is devoted to Death! and a beautiful chant it is. Death is also in Arcadia; and the first thing we meet with in the land of summer is the marble tomb with the "Et in Arcadia Ego." One might be excused for applying to herself her own charming song, —

A WANDERING FEMALE SINGER

      Thou hast loved and thou hast suffered!

      Unto feeling deep and strong,

      Thou hast trembled like a harp's frail string —

      I know it by thy song!

      Thou hast loved – it may be vainly —

      But well – oh! but too well —

      Thou hast suffered all that woman's heart

      May bear – but must not tell.

      Thou hast wept and thou hast parted,

      Thou hast been forsaken long;

      Thou hast watch'd for steps that came not back —

      I know it by thy song!

      By its fond and plaintive lingering

      On each word of grief so long,

      Oh! thou hast loved and suffered much —

      I know it by thy song!

      But with this mournful spirit we have no quarrel. It is, as we have said, without a grain of bitterness; it loves to associate itself with all things beautiful in nature; it makes the rose its emblem. It does so in the following lines to

THE SHADOW OF A FLOWER

      'Twas a dream of olden days,

      That Art, by some strange power,

      The visionary form could raise

      From the ashes of a flower:

      That a shadow of the rose,

      By its own meek beauty bowed,

      Might slowly, leaf by leaf, unclose,

      Like pictures in a cloud.

               .          .          .          .             .

      A fair, yet mournful thing!

      For the glory of the bloom

      That a flush around it shed,

      And the soul within, the rich perfume,

      Where were they? – fled, all fled!

      Naught but the dim, faint line

      To speak of vanished hours —

      Memory! what are joys of thine?

      Shadows of buried flowers!

      We should be disposed to dwell entirely on the shorter pieces of Mrs Hemans, but this would hardly be just. There is one of her more ambitious efforts which, at all events, seems to demand a word from us. The Vespers of Palermo is not perhaps the most popular, even of her longer productions – it is certainly written in what is just now the most unpopular form – yet it appears to us one of the most vigorous efforts of her genius. It has this advantage too – it can be happily alluded to without the necessity of detailing the plot – always a wearisome thing, to both the critic, and the reader: every body knows the real tragedy of the Sicilian Vespers. The drama is unpopular as a form of composition, because the written play is still considered as a production, the chief object of which is missed if it is not acted; and the acting of plays is going into desuetude. When the acting of tragedies shall be entirely laid aside, (as it bids fair to be,) – that is, as an ordinary amusement of the more refined and cultivated classes of society – and the drama shall become merely a class of literature, like all others, for private perusal – then its popularity, as a form of composition, will probably revive. For there is one order of poetry – and that the more severe and manly – which seems almost to require this form. When an author, careless of description, or not called to it by his genius, is exclusively bent on portraying character and passion, and those deeper opinions and reflections which passion stirs from the recesses of the human mind, the drama seems the only form natural for him to employ.

      The opinion we have ventured to express on the inevitable decease of the acting drama – of tragic representations – as a general amusement of an age increasing in refinement, will probably subject us, in certain quarters, to an indignant reproof. Shakspeare, and the legitimate drama! seems, with some, to have all the sacredness of a national cause. Shakspeare, by all means – Shakspeare for ever! eternally! – only we would rather read him – if we could creep up there – with little Felicia Browne, in the apple-tree. Shakspeare supports the stage – so far as it remains supported – not the stage Shakspeare. And can he support it long? Consider what sort of amusement it is which tragic representation affords – for of comedy we say nothing – consider that it must either thrill us with emotions of a most

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