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That our readers may have an opportunity of trying their band at interpretation, and forming their own judgment as to the merits of this strange production, we will set before then the concluding stanzas of the section entitled "Hers," which, as far as we can make out, is a longwinded address of a loving lady to her lord, who is represented as a sort of modern Messiah ::

"The nearer you, O love, I shrink the more,-
I could press my heart to thine, and die;
For Loss stands up behind you most high,
That I shall surely fall on Life's worst floor,
My hands upon my face for passion sore,
That sin alone can soothe, if my wild cry
For sweet companionship of smile and sigh

May find no entrance through your heart's dear door.
'I am not equal! no! no woman is !'-

I cry in my despair's last catching hope!
But would there came some speedy end to this;
For I am wrecked, yet dare not trust the rope;
And Death frowns fiercer for the promised bliss
Beyond the cruel cliff's down landward slope.

"Oh what is this? What hands are now so strong
Which wish to bind me to a monstrous mate,
From you who has outdreamed men from my fate?
What subtle chains are these, though golden, wrong,
That would thus exile me from land of Song,
And force me by the waves of Fashion wait
Till some deep-plunging beast on me would sate
Salt passion's greed, dragging me down among
The dead and fleshless ones of that chill Sea
Whose love is death, despite its lovely looks?
What rock so cold as this I feel? Are we
Then parted aye? Or do I see near nooks
Touched with quick golden light from sword to free,
That comes in thy strong hand to cut fixed hooks ?

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"I'm speechless, frozen dead, stolid as stone!
Oh help me! help me! I who dare not speak!
Thus never could the hours their tortures wreak
On mortal soul before! I . . . I alone
I only . . . so have trembled to each tone
Of love I cannot ask-I must not seek;
And I shall die if I remain thus weak.
The seeds are now in me for ever sown!

O Sun, shine out! Come, Summer, come to me,
Lest Winter's reign prolonged, should sadly kill
All hope of luscious fruit for Autumn's glee;
For thine must ever be the leading will,
And I the fertile garden where each tree
Shall grow thy fruits to cure wide human ill.

"O joy! Hold, hold, O heart! for Silence tells—
Sweet Silence tells me how to go and pray;
For who am I that he should worship pay,
So wonderful, to me whose heart but spells
The volumes of delight his power outwells!

...

O God, is this thy world of night and day?
Have I quick passed to higher spheres' display?
My love! my life! spired Thought has bells, bells, bells,
Which ring great giddy joy, and Voice is drowned
But thou art mine, and I am thine, we know,
Through life to death, though round to furthest round
Of Earth's love-rings in Heaven's boundless flow,
Where, past all silence, opens spheral sound,
And human joy shall into final go."

We are at a loss to understand either the grammar or the sense of the line:

"From you who has outdreamed men from my fate;"

and we protest against such expressions as "force me by the waves of Fashion wait;" "spired thought has bells, bells, bells;" and "joy shall into final go." Mr. Sinclair may be as original and profound and subtle as he pleases, but he must at least conform to the laws of the language in which he writes. If he wishes to be thought a second Browning, he should try to imitate him in his best points, not in his faults, and, at any rate, avoid ungraminatical expressions.

Miscellaneous Poems. By FRANCIS M. DEAN, B.A. Dublin: E. Ponsonby. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1876.-If a taste for poetry necessarily implied the possession of a power to produce it, Mr. Dean might fairly claim a high place among poets, for he tells us, in the language of Edgar Poe, that poetry is with him a "passion, not a purpose." But it is quite possible to be foud, not merely of reading poetry, but also of attempting to write it, without being able to attain to any high degree of excellence in the art, just as many take a great delight in hearing music who are very indifferent performers, or unable to perform at all. Mr. Dean bespeaks indulgent criticism on the ground that most of his little poems were written in his youth from a mere love of poetry. Viewed in this light they may escape severe censure, and some of them may even be pronounced creditable productions. Still, we cannot but question the wisdom of publishing pieces which, according to the author's own confession, "bear the impress of an unripe mind," and "exhibit many crude faults and imperfections." Crudity and extravagance are gladly excused in a youthful writer who shows signs of true poetic inspiration; but it is not the excesses of a too luxuriant imagination stirred by intense feeling that any one will lay to Mr. Dean's charge. His work suffers from the deficiency rather than the excess of moving power. It wants the warmth and flush of healthy life. There is an air of unreality about it. The pieces read more like exercises in composition than the spontaneous outbursts of deep feeling and vivid imagination. The author treats conventional topics in a conventional way. He is very fond of personifying abstract ideas and inanimate objects, and addressing poems to them. One of the best of these is the "Ode to Autumn," which runs thus:

"I hail thee, Crowner of the fruitful year,

And crowned thyself with fair fruit-laden boughs!

My soul grows gladdened at thy presence near,
And when I see those ripe wreaths round thy brows :
Earth is content, and ended care allows
A mellow happiness to anxious hearts:
Each breath, soft-wafted from thy rich store, blows

Our love to warmer joyaunce, and imparts
To every breast a fame 'gainst Winter's coldest darts.

“Thy season is not one for pining grief;
Our cup runs o'er with warmer things than tears :
Why should we mourn the falling flower and leaf?
Through their decay the golden fruit appears ;
The cornfields stand with happy-listening ears ;
Their smiles of ripeness sun our faces; trees
Wear now the royal pride of crowning years ;

Fatness and plenty fill the fertile leas,
And sounds of thankful peace float in with every breeze.

“Now is the homestead glad, and warm, and gay.
Its aspect wears a hospitable look ;
The fireside lengthens out the short’ning day,
With light as loved as suns which have forsook,
Whose cheerful blaze floods every cozy nook:
There all the old kind faces glow again,
Poring on some prized poet-breathing book ;

And hearts that lost their freshest flowers from pain,
Reap fruits of rest and peace, sweet-ripened like the grain.

“ Now is the country given up to pomp.

Of rural glee, and flows the mirth divine ;
Where youths and maidens sing, and dance, and romp,
In honour of the harvest 'neath the vine,
Whose purple clusters promise the red wine,
Low-hanging through the leafage tempting sweet,
Each grape of one rich rosy drop the sign;

While circle round, young children kissing meet,
And with coy blushing looks that longed-for fruitage greet.

“Heaven robes thee in all splendours of the clouds,
Which, streaming gold float o'er a purple sky
To gird thy throne-the sun-in glorious crowds ;
Even earth has caught that warm light from on high,
As rich-winged bird the sunset glowing nigh,
And passes with her solemn woods and hills
Burning away—a wintry death to die :

When wailing winds, and moaning streams and rills
Shall waft off each dead leaf, as coldness blights and kills.

“Like thee may come the autumn of our love
And life,-full of rich fruits and ripened worth,
Crowned with a brighter glory from above;
And know no pining want, or stricken dearth,
Nothing that hints of scarcity on earth!
And at death's cold and darkly closing hour,
When love and life fulfil their second birth,

Let us lie down in beauty, hope, and power,
Sure of returning Spring, and Spring's reviving dower."

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Mr. Dean's subjects are not all of a conventional character. He has "On Mr. Pickwick," and another entitled "The Potatoe" (sic). To extract poetry from a potato may not be so impossible a feat as extracting sunbeams from a cucumber, but it is no easy matter, and the idea of apostrophizing the homely vegetable in ambitious verse verges on the ridiculous. However, we must do Mr. Dean the justice to say he has done as much as could be expected towards investing the familiar object with poetic interest.

Sport in Abyssinia; or, The Mareb and Tackazzee. By the Earl of Mayo, Lieutenant Grenadier Guards. London, John Murray. 1876. This is an unpretending volume, but not the less interesting on that account. It professes to be simply a compilation from a diary kept by the author during a sporting tour in Abyssinia. What he saw and did, and the impressions made on his mind by the different events and scenes are related in a frank and easy style, without any affectation of authorship; and this gives a natural and pleasing freshness to his pages.

On the 29th of December, 1874, the author and his party landed at Alassowah, and on the 29th of March, 1875, he sailed from that port on his return home. Thus his tour extended only over a period of three months, and is not represented as having been prolific either in adventure or in game, though the novelty of the expedition and the delightful scenery afforded ample enjoyment. The mode of travelling in the country is rather primitive. Parties travelling "in the king's name" are passed on from one chief to another by a system of compulsory service :

"After the chief's soldiers and followers had hunted up the villagers, and dragged them, kicked them, and beat them, they were made to carry our baggage. We started about one hour before sunset, the coolies having gone

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in front. The reason that the soldiers treated the villagers in this way was, that the king, who was far away, had heard there were some Englishmen coming into the country, and had given orders to the chiefs or governors that we were to be treated with respect, and everything that we wanted done for us. We travelled across a large tableland with not a vestige of foliage to be seen, and no sound to be heard but now and then the bleating of the sheep as they were driven to their pens near the villages for the night. The moon rose, and we very soon found ourselves near a village called Adouguada. All our coolies had stopped; the lazy fellows had scarcely been travelling for two hours; they had handed our baggage over to the headman of the village. This is a usual mode of proceeding in Abyssinia; one is passed on from village to village, and if the villages happened to be close together the day is spent in quarrelling and in looking over and counting the baggage. When I rode up they were all talking at once and making a horrid noise, as is usual on such occasions. I villagers of Adouguada that if they did asked for a hearing, and informed the not carry our baggage I should take two cows and two sheep from the village, and stop there all that night with my servants; under these circumstances they would have to provide us with bread, &c. Brou, the interpreter, advised me to do this; he said, It is the only way to get on, and you are travelling in the king's name, and can have what you want. H. then came up with K., and we procured something to eat and some coffee. The villagers made much noise and gesticulation, and then at last picked up half our things and went off.

"We then started for Sellaadarou,

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the place we were going to camp at no traces of them again; and I think that night. It was bright moonlight, it is a great chance, in a large rapid and the moon in the east, as some of river of this sort, if their carcases are my readers probably know, appears

found at all. I sent servants during very different from our moon at home. the following days up and down the It was a beautiful ride, but a little cold. river, but they were quite unsuccessful We arrived at Sellaadarou about nine in finding any trace of the beasts." p.m., or perhaps a little later. K., like an old soldier as he was, pitched the Hunting the elephant and lion camp just outside the village, in a sort

was not more successful than the of little garden that the villagers had made to grow their capsicums in ; it

attempts made to bag the hippowas surrounded by a thick thorn hedge, potami :made of boughs cut from the thorny acacia. This hedge provided us with "We had arranged with Barrakee wood without any trouble ; so we made to go for three days and sleep out, or two large bonfires to warm ourselves, bivouac, and hunt elephants ; we acate some supper, and turned in after a cordingly started straight inland tolong worrying day. The other half of wards the mountain of Walkait. After the baggage had not come up when we we had crossed the hills, under which retired to our tents.”

the Tackazzee ran, we came upon a

sort of open plain with little hills Lord Mayo does not appear to

cropping up here and there, and we had have bad much success as a sports

been following fresh elephant tracks the man. Ho has the candour to con

whole time. I must not forget to mention

that during the night a larye herd of elefess, “I am, indeed, an unlucky phants had passed close to our camp, sportsman, and I always was. and that all the jungle round was Certainly, bis ill-luck clung to him trampled and broken in every direction. in Abyssinia, for where lions, ele- I just remember, in a half-sleepy state, phants, buffaloes, and hippopotami hearing strange noises, but I thought abounded, bis chief exploits and

at the time it was only the "hippos successes were among sand-grouse,

disporting themselves in the pool below.

At last Barrakee, who was going in snipe, quail, guinea-fowl, pigs, and

front, said that we were getting very such “ sinall deer":

close to the elephants, and that we

must leave our mules behind us, and “I heard, in a pool below the ford follow them up the rest of the way on where we had crossed, some animals foot. Not long afterwards we saw two making an unusual noise, grunting and elephants in the distance movivg slowly blowing. I went down with my gun. along. We tried to stalk them, but we bearers to the edge of the river, and, did not succeed. Barrakee took us to behold! there were eight fine hippopo- some water, where we drank, and close tami disporting themselves in the river, by which, as we came up to it, were much in the same way as the old river- some pigs lying asleep under a tree. horse at the Zoo may be seen swim- An Abyssinian tried to knock one over ming about his tank. They reared with the butt of his gun, for we did themselves out of the water and ex- not like to fire, being so close to the posed their heads and part of their elephants. necks, sometimes opening their enor- “ After we had halted for a little time mous jaws so that I could see their and rested ourselves, Barrakee said we white tusks. I fired at the nearest of should move on, and he took us to the the herd, and hit him behind the ear; he top of a steep little hill, where he said began bleeding profusely, and waltzed we were to pass the night, and fronı round and round in the water, causing whence could sec

the whole tremendous waves. At last in about country round us. Brou, and a couple half an hour he sank, and we saw him of men that Barrakee had with him, no more. I shot at several more, and built

a das.'

We ate I believe, killed another, but we luncheon, and then we sat down to

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