WHAT a tremendous summer! what sultry noontides! The blue sky is blotched with patches of clouds, leadenhued and thunder-charged. There is not a capful of air throughout the whole heavens; the breezes of early morning have all stolen away, like Asiatic ladies, to take their siesta. The atmosphere is heavy with electricity, and one feels faint and languid; and the spirits flag, sympathising with the flagging body. "Such as is the air, such be our spirits; and as our spirits, such are our humours," saith Jobertus, in his treatise upon fevers. And so the hot, dry air is drying up our very souls for we are in the city, baked and blistered, with the sun shining down in his meridian ferocity, his native ardour intensified a thousandfold by the reflection from flashing glass and candescent flag-ways. The great Stagirite was of opinion that heat alleviates all physical sufferings“ Calor ad omnes dolores, vel ad plures est adjumento;" but not such heat as that under which we are panting in these noontides. What shall we do ?-shall we bar it out with closed windows? If we do, we suffocate. Shall we throw open every door and casement? Incontinently we shall have the hot air, bearing in with it the thick, white stifling dust of the street (for the civic aquarius goeth about, but rarely with the grateful watering-cart), and a legion of buzzing insects that set one frantic with their tiny trumpeting. There is but one thing for us. We will compound, and take a middle course-open the windows, shut the jalousies, and draw close the summer curtains, and then betake ourselves to the softest couch, in the darkest corner of the room, with a pleasant book or two, that will not tax our intellect, but rather please our fancy, and so condescend to tide over the hours of our existence till evening brings long shadows and grateful coolness.

Forthwith we put in practice this laudable design. We lie in the mellow chiaro oscuro of our little study, far away in the remoter regions of the

VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXII.

house, where no domestic sounds can penetrate, no noise of civic life find entrance. Upon the table beside us stands our vase of fresh flowers, plucked in a certain suburban garden, before the sun had drunk up all the dew in the carly morn; and there is a glass, and a bottle of seltzer-water-nothing stronger, upon the honour of an editor; and halfa-dozen volumes sent to us by the Muses, and which we have laid aside during the occupation of graver matters, for an hour of quiet, meditative repose, such as this summer sultriness induces.

Theocritus, in his Idyl called "The Graces," inveighs against the want of patronage which poets experienced in his days. Everyone loved his money too well to spend it on poets, and was ready to exclaim-"Let the gods honour the poets. Homer is sufficient for all; who wants to hear any other? He is the best of poets who will take nothing from me—

Θεοι τιμῶσιν αοίδους Τις δέ κεν αλλον ακούσαι • Αλις παντεσσιν Όμηρος, Ουτος αοιδών λωστος ός εξ εμευ οίσεται ουδεν. Had the Syracusan lived in our days, he would not have found the popular appetite for poetry so exceedingly abstemious, nor, we hope, the public patronage so discouraging. Quite the contrary. He would find that one poet, even though he were Homer, would go but a short way in staying the stomach of this verse-devouring generation. The "membra disjecta' of the blind old man would be picked to the bone as clean as the limbs of a chicken at a pic-nic; and we would be all the readier to discuss a legion of poetæ minores, by way of entremêts. Ay, and we would be contented to pay for our luxuries, too, only we like to know that we get the real article. When we bargain for swans, or thrushes, or nightingales, we don't like to be set down to geese, or buntings, or tomtits.

The poetic taste is really very creditable now-a-days, and for the most part is tolerably healthy too. We are reprinting all the good old classical au

thors of English poetry, from Geoffry Chaucer downwards; while the press daily sends forth new aspirants for poetic fame, with a profuseness that would indicate either that the public is a generous patron of all the sons of song, or that poets are not such poor devils as they were in the days of Oliver Goldsmith or Thomas Otway.

Well, let us see what lies before us for this summer-noon's inspection.

First comes a little volume, turned out in Pickering's best style, a reprint it would seem by the substituted preface. Whatever be the defects of Mr. James Orton-and we shall advert to them ere we close "The Enthusiast"-he has undoubtedly poetic fervor and considerable fancy. With these two are joined a very rich and abundant power of verbiage, and a nice sense of the melodious. He has all the mechanism of poetry, and a great deal more; and so the little volume in our hands is one of which he has no reason to be ashamed, either for its own intrinsic merits, or as giving the promise of better things with advancing years and more matured judgment.

The subject of the poem is the life of a solitary, who retired from the world to fix his abode in the desert, where

"The huge, prone, marble skeleton.

Of proud Palmyra now so stilly lies,

So vast, so calm, beneath the moonlight pale."

The feelings and character of the Enthusiast are thus sketched by himself:

"From earliest boyhood all the ways of men (In that rude, restless world which prisoned me)

I learned to hate, and soar to higher things,
And ne'er forgot my hopes were not of earth.
I gazed with wonder on man's rotting cares,
I saw that demons once had hoof'd the world,
Which after rolled a human hell through
Space.

I saw the grinning fiends of Scorn, and Hate,
And cursed Jealousy swayed o'er the globe.
I saw that Vileness crawled to highest place,
And Virtue lay in tattered rags beneath!
I saw the haughty look of fiendish Pride,
Cast on poor fallen wretches, virtue-wrecked,
And no kind, pitying hand held forth to save.
I saw black Avarice slime the Church of God,
Which basely licked the sallow hand of
Wealth!-

And hollow Vice, in lofty Virtue's form,
Flaunted her banner o'er my native land.

Then sick at heart I left the human world. My friends, my home, and dwelt in Nature's

holds.

"Upon the wild sea shore I made my home,
Where Nature grandly hymns Eternity,
And piled it with the thoughts of mighty men.
Then lofty thoughts, and starry visions came,
Till solitude grew filled with holy light.
Through the strongholds of Nature, or of Man,
O'er sky-tipped mountains, or through cities
huge,

Or on wild ridges of white-breasted waves,
I wandered oft, and fed my growing mind.
But most I loved when storm, or calm pre-
vailed,

To lie, or wander, on the cliff-piled shore,
Beneath Night's temple, solemn, gorgeous,

vast,

With naught around me but the Eternal's voice

Telling me of mightier things unseen, unheard."

Even here love finds an entrance; he meets one who fills his whole heart

"Whose liquid notes on silence well, soft fell,

Like smooth pearls dropping in their crystal cell."

But his happiness is short-lived; his bride sickens; he bears her through many lands, in a vain search for health, till, at length

"As when far music gently fades away, Or fainter scent comes from the lily's cup, So gradual ebbed her life, to scenes of bliss."

The widowed lover wanders away through eastern climes; and in a vision he is led by his guardian angel through the spirit realms, and his whole life, from birth, is arrayed before him. A succession of scenes are exhibited, in which Mr. Orton displays vividness of thought and expression, and occasionally rises to a grandeur and elevation truly poetic. We might cite many passages to illustrate the writer's power. Here is one, for instance:

"And lo! the sheen of myriad angel wings Shimmered throughout the blue infinitude. Thro' all infinity my spirit stretched: Vast galaxies of countless blazing suns, Each with its whirling planet, moon-encirqued,

All hugely round one blazing centre moved; And toward that central sun my spirit yearned."

forms."

The attendent angel yields to the desire of his earthly charge, and discourses to him of the great mysteries of creation-" Of God, of angels, and of fallen man," and tells him how spirit, matter, and all things create

"Grew like a flower from out the Almighty's breast, The seed, the stalk, and final azure bloom."

This is a high subject to deal with; he who ventures to soar so high should have a strong wing to sustain him; let him remember the fate of Icarus, and not approach too near the sun. Our wonder is not that Mr. Orton is unequal to this excursion, but rather that he has accomplished his perilous flight so safely. He has had the sagacity not to investigate those sublime metaphysics too closely, but to content himself with such general description as conduces to poetic effect and grandeur; as one who sails ou some calm northern sea marks, in the distance, the grand glittering outline of icy capes with the rosy light of heaven upon their awful summits, SO the writer cautiously steers his way by the well-known chart that revelation and philosophy have laid down for man's guidance. Here is the prelude of his discourse, and we think it affords no mean evidence of poetic ability :

"Eternity, Infinity, and PowerPower mighty, positive, and absolute,

Within the Eternal's bosom calmly dwelt, And God the Father was the All in All.

"As yet the active God, the eternal Son, Within the Father's bosom calmly slept, Yet fast was ripening into lifeful birth.

"All brilliant stars, all suns and systems lay (Which are but beads strung on God's mighty will),

All ripening gradual, with the infant-God.

"All hugeous worlds, and all created things, With all developments of outthrown power, Were for his heritage and governance.

"And all events, and mysteries, thro' all Time,

Creation, fall, redemption, and re-birth, Lay mapped in light, within the Eternal's soul."

The poem before us contains some very melodious lyrical snatches interlightness and relief, and exhibit a spersed throughout it, which give it good deal of skill. We said Mr. Orton has faults. faults both of conception and composition; at times he is extravagant in both. Like most young writers, he is constantly aiming sionally is overwrought in sentiment at too much. Thus his passion occaas it is overdone, at times, in expression. His rhapsodies are not always free from turgescence; his affluence of diction betrays him into an over-ornamentation. He is too fond of introducing epithets which often weaken the force of his language; and he can never resist the temptation of a figure. But these are the faults of youth and genius-an exuberance which culture will control. He has sterling merits that outnumber them a thousand-fold- -a true poetic temperament - a devout love of the true and the beautiful, in moral as in physical things, and may yet do far better than he has done, when time has matured his thoughts and teaches him to regulate the powers of his mind, and use with more frugality the stores of his imagination. To this volume are appended some prose essays, which impress us with a very favourable opinion of the originality as well as the boldness of Mr. Orton's mind. Though we mean to confine ourselves at present to the realms of poetry, yet there is so much in these essays that lies close upon the domains of the Muses, that we imperceptibly wander over the

boundary to meet such a passage as this:

"The thoughts of a great Poet or original Thinker, like mountain torrents, sink first through the highest talented minds, and gradually lapse therethrough, till they sweep adown, gathering fulness and force as they go, and pour through and fertilise the broad valleys of humanity, where their rich beneficial effects are chiefly and more extensively visible. So with the once thin streamlet of Christianity; and so with all great teachings since Time began. So also with each individual mind, which is a minute representative, in its spiritual wanderings, backslidings, and aspirations, of The Ages of the World."

We open a book, by Martin Tupper, with a vague sense of apprehension and timidity somewhat such as one feels who stands on a rock ere he plunges into a sea, of whose depth and temperature he has no exact knowledge, though he has sad misgivings that it is too deep to fathom and too cold to be altogether agreeable. Dr. Martin Tupper's proverbial philosophy is one of those vast rhythmical oceans whereon the unhappy mariner, who is forced to navigate it, wanders about in much perplexity. The surges of long-rolling lines sweep him pitilessly before them, drifting him he knows not where. He sees no shore for which he can make he has no chart to guide his course; but ever and anon some light breaks through the gloom, which he is assured is the light of Philosophy. Without a metaphor we have never been able to understand that very bombastic and very pretentious congregation of philosophic hallucinations. Very magnificent common-placing it is indeed; but that does not make philosophy. Even though that commonplacing be magnified through the mist of big words of dubious meaning very turgid lines, of interminable length, and no measure or rythm in particular but that does not make poetry. Nevertheless, Dr. Tupper, for these very reasons, has his admirers; and we fear it is little short of heresy to question his claims to be a great philosopher and a great poet vellous compound, uniting in himself the wisdom of the owl and the sweet

a mar

ness of the cygnet. Our surprise and our pleasure were both considerable, on opening this last volume of Mr. Tupper's, to find short lines, simple expressions, and intelligible sentiments. There is more of heart and less of mind about these little poems than we were disposed to think Mr. Tupper would condescend to. They are, as he says himself, "not cold pieces of poetical artifice, deliberately carved and gilt (whereby, we presume, with a very just apprecia tion, he would indicate the 'proverbial philosophy'), but have grown up, from time to time, the natural crop of occasion and circumstance." Now, we are very much disposed to think the "natural crop" is very far superior in hue and perfume to the forced vegetation which the author has, on other occasions, given to the world. One can read through this volume and understand it from cover to cover. He will find many little pieces abounding in thoughts, which, if they are not elevated above the common-place, have the advantage of not being elevated above common sense. We will take one lyric at random; and we might select a dozen such, which one can read with real pleasure :

A WORD OF WISDOM.
"Make the best of all things,
As thy lot is cast;
Whatsoe'er we call things,

All is well at last,
If meanwhile in cheerful power
Patience rules the suffering hour.

"Make the best of all things,

Howsoe'er they be ;
Change may well befall things
If it's ill with thee;
And if well, this present joy
Let no future fears destroy.

"Make the best of all things,-
That is Wisdom's word;
In the day of small things

Is its comfort heard,
And its blessing soothes not less
Any heyday of success.

"Make the best of all things;

Discontent's old leaven
Falsely would forestall things,
Antedating heaven;

But smile thou and rest content,
Bearing trials wisely sent."

1855.