And whose the pretty prize should be, They vow'd to ask the gods.

"Which Venus hearing, thither came,

And for their boldness stript them; And, taking thence from each his flame, With rods of myrtle whipt them.

"Which done, to still their wanton cries,

When quiet grown she'd seen them, She kiss'd, and wiped their dove-like eyes, And gave the bag between them.'

In something of the same miniature style, we find in Herrick a good many lighter lays of fairy mythology; but to compare them, as has been done, to Shakspeare's inventions in the same department, is to do them injustice by extravagant encomium.

The two following pieces may be taken as fair, and they are certainly creditable, specimens of our author's powers in the moral-pathetic. They are smooth and sweet, natural and animated.

"But you are lovely leaves, where we'
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave:
And after they have shown their pride,
Like you, awhile, they glide
Into the grave."

Is there not, however, a slight flaw in the last of these pieces? If from the first the blossoms are considered not in themselves, and as ultimate forms of beauty, but only as the " pledges of a fruitful tree," why should we grieve so much when the pledge gives way to the real value that it represents, the shadow to the substance which it preceded and foreshowed?

But the most attractive and charac

teristic of Herrick's pieces is the "May Morning Address to Corinna." Here, indeed, he seems to be at home, and in his proper and peculiar domain. It flows like the extemporaneous eloquence of a ready speaker, on the subject next his heart. It has the cheerfulness of the morning breeze, and the brightness of the morning dew. It combines at once the freshness and the luxuriance of the season that it celebrates. It aims not at high devotion or deep philosophy, but it is lively, popular, and pure; full of fancy and full of feeling, such as the scene and the occasion should inspire. Though it leaves room here and there for correction, there are few poems which have so successfully attained the precise object of their composition as the one to which we now refer.

CORINNA'S GOING A-MAYING. "Get up, get up for shame; the blooming

morn

Upon her wings presents the God unshorn :
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air :
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herb and tree:
Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the
east,

Above an hour since; yet you not drest;
Nay, not so much as out of bed;
When all the birds have matins said,
And sung their thankful hymns: 'tis sin,
Nay, profanation to keep in;

When as a thousand virgins on this day,
Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch in

"Come, my Corinna, come; and, coming, mark

How each field turns a street, each street a park

Made green, and trimm'd with trees: see how

Devotion gives each house bough,

Or branch; each porch, each door, ere this
An ark, a tabernacle is,

Made up of whitethorn neatly interwove,
As if here were those cooler shades of love.
Can such delights be in the street,
And open fields, and we not see't?
Come, we'll abroad; and let's obey
The proclamation made for May,
And sin no more, as we have done,
staying;

by

But, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying!

"There's not a budding boy or girl this day
But is got up, and gone to bring in May:
A deal of youth, ere this, is come
Back, and with whitethorn laden home:
Some have dispatch'd their cakes and

Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks pick'd; yet we're not a-Maying!

"Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless folly of the time:
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty:
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun :
And as a vapour, or a drop of rain
Once lost, can ne'er be found again;
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade;
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drown'd with us in endless night.
Then, while time serves, and we
are but
decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-May-
ing!"

Of Herrick's sacred poetry we shall say nothing, except that it is in general very inferior in merit. There are some strong and solemn verses in his "Litany to the Holy Spirit," preserved, we believe, by oral tradition ; but the piece as a whole is unequal.

We have now, we hope, given sufficient samples, both in number and in selection, to enable our readers to appreciate the merits of these two poets, and to sit in judgment themselves upon the criticisms which we have ventured to pronounce. Both of them, it is obvious, are deserving of no inconsiderable praise, and have done good service to the cause of poetry, whether in its intellectual or in its mechanical advancement. Carew, we think, has contributed to this end chiefly by the soundness of his thoughts, the rectitude of his feelings, and the selection of his language: Herrick, more by the liveliness of his images, the facility of his style, and the variety of his numbers.

ON the 5th of May, 1789, Louis XVI., with great pomp, opened the National Assembly of France, in which Neckar had previously, with the cordial concurrence of the crown, doubled the representation of the Tiers Etat, and all Europe was convulsed by the boundless anticipations of social regeneration and public felicity, which were then thought to be opening on the nation and mankind; on 8th August, 1789, Neckar, the author of that prodigious change, was driven from office, an exile from France, under the pressure of the passions which he had called forth; and, on the 31st of October, 1793, the whole leaders of the Girondists, the great promoters of the Revolution, illustrious for their talents but culpable for their rashness, were led out to execution, amidst the execration and triumphs of the mob, whom their suicidal hands had elevated to undeserved and fatal power.

On the 17th of July, 1832, the Reform Bill, urged on by the whole force of the Whig party, supported by the whole revolutionary energy of the people, received the royal assent in England, and the British empire was convulsed to its centre by the rejoicings of the nation at the sudden elevation of five hundred thousand new electors to political power. In July 1834, Lord Grey was overthrown by the "constant and active pressure from without," which, in his own words, he felt it impossible to resist; and, on the 7th May, 1839, Lord Melbourne's, the whole Reform Cabinet, resigned the helm, in consequence of having, as they themselves admitted, lost the confidence of both Houses of Parliament; and the party of the Whigs, who had looked forward to the Reform Bill as their charter to a continual enjoyment of power, sunk to the ground without any external force, from avowed internal weakness and general external contempt.

The Revolution of 1789, and the establishment of the National Assembly, was the triumph of the middle classes over the monarchy and old aristocracy who composed the form of government in France. The Revolution of the 10th of August, 1792, which

VOL. XLV. NO, CCLXXXIV,

led immediately to the captivity of the King and all the royal family, was the triumph of the working classes over the constitutional monarchy and the middle ranks. The passing of the Reform Bill in this country was the forcible usurpation of power by the middling classes, effected, as Lord John Russell has told us, by a personal request made by the King to the Conservative Peers to withdraw from the Upper House. And already the symptoms of a similar discontent and dissatisfaction among the working classes are apparent in this country; a convention, daily inculcating treasonable and seditious doctrines, has sat, without meeting with the least obstacle, for four months in the metropolis; and open insurrection against the govern ment of the Queen and the Reformed Parliament has broke out in almost all the manufacturing districts of England.

The whole power of the crown was exerted in France, in the earlier stages of the Revolution, to force on the great organic changes which were then called for by so large a portion of the nation; and the whole power of the crown has, on the two most momentous occasions of the English Revolution, been exerted to forward the same movement party ;-once when King William, in April 1831, dissolved Parliament, in order to bring into immediate operation the great flood of liberal opinions which then inundated the country; and again in May 1839, when Queen Victoria, acting under the influence of a Papist and Radical junto, stopped Sir Robert Peel, on the pretext of her female attendants, in the formation of a Conservative cabinet.

On the 21st of January, 1793, Louis, in return for his unbounded concessions to the Reform party, was publicly executed in the principal square of his own capital, amidst the tears of the Royal, and the execration and derision of the Revolutionary party in France. On the 17th November, 1834, William IV., taught by dearbought experience the insupportable weight of Whig oppression, and the ruinous consequences of Whig administration, threw himself in despera 3 F

tion upon the Duke of Wellington, and appealed to the loyalty of the real friends of the constitution, against the tyranny of those who had excited the passions of the people only to mislead or to betray them. The hour of retribution to Queen Victoria, for the desperate effort she has unconsciously been advised to make to induce a Popish government upon the country, has not yet arrived; but if her efforts are successful, and such a domination is established, it will inevitably come. God grant that such a consummation may be averted by the opening intelligence of her royal mind to the real interests alike of her people and herself; and that, when the hour of trial approaches, the Conservatives may be the first to protect her from the consequences of her present infatuated and domineering advisers.

Who will assert, after these marvellous coincidences, that history is not philosophy teaching by examples; and that, in a careful observation of the past, is not to be found the means of an almost certain anticipation of the future?

Among all the prodigies with which the eventful domestic history of our times has been distinguished, there is none, perhaps, so remarkable as the universal contempt and obloquy into which, in so short a time, the Reform Bill has fallen. We all recollect the transports of 1832:-"The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill," is still ringing in our ears; the crash of stones which broke the windows of all supposed to be hostile to Maxima Charta, is still rattling in our recollection; we yet see in vivid remembrance bands of music, mingled with tricolored flags, traversing the streets; the huge half-drunk crowds of ragged artisans who followed the colours, and the disgraceful spectacle of gentlemen of property and education heading a multitude rushing headlong and blindfold to their country's ruin. We have not forgotten the brickbat and the bludgeon, the frightful election mobs and the savage plebeian atrocity; we have not forgotten, nor will history forget, that to such a degree did the nation run mad under the excitement applied to it by government, that the Duke of Wellington, the saviour of England, was only rescued from murder on the streets of London, by the gallantry of the Lincoln's-Inn

students; and that the last hours of Sir Walter Scott, the glory of Scotland, were embittered by the hellish cry of "Burke Sir Walter!" which has stamped eternal disgrace on the Reformers of Roxburghshire.

Where are all these transports now? Where is the universal gratitude of the nation to the patriotic founders of its liberties and its rights?—where the eternal thankfulness of the people for the inestimable blessings of Maxima Charta? How marvellous a change to have come over the spirit of a nation in the short space of seven years! No one is now to be found who will defend the Reform Bill, either among its most enthusiastic supporters or among its most resolute opponents. The Whigs lament that it has by no means answered their expectations, and that that eternal dominion which they had fondly anticipated from its effects, is likely to be entirely frustrated by the increased Conservative tendencies of the middle classes whom it installed in power. The Radicals openly denounce it, as productive of a tyranny far worse than that of the old Tories. They execrate the experienced sway of the middle classes as infinitely more oppressive than that of the aristocracy and gentry who preceded them; they bewail the New Poor Law, which has been fixed about their necks by the selfish rapacity of these hard taskmasters; and fiercely contend for radical reform, universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by ballot, as the only means of effecting the real regeneration of society, and permanently arresting the intolerable tyranny of property and intelligence. It was the boast of the authors of the Reform Bill that it would put the House of Commons in harmony with the sentiments of the people, and prevent that jarring be tween the acts of the legislature and the feelings of the commonalty which had been the great subject of complaint under the old constitution. Are matters any better in these respects now? Are the presenting of the petition of the National Convention, rolled into the House of Commons upon a wheel-barrow, bearing fifteen hundred thousand signatures-the open insurrection of the Chartists in so many quarters of England-the general arming of the middle classes in the manufacturing counties, for their own