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1859.]

A Bunch of Song-Flowers.

Whether the slant lines of the rain
Fill high the brook and shake the pane,
Or noon-day reapers, wearied, halt
On sheaves beneath a blinding vault
Unshaded by a vapour's fold-
Though from that mountain summit old,
The cloudy thunder breaks and rolls
Through deep reverberating souls;
Though from it comes the angry light,
Whose forky shiver sears the sight,
And rends the shrine from floor to dome,
And leaves the gods without a home.

And ever in that under world

Round which the weary clouds are furled,
The cry of one that buys and sells,
The laughter of the bridal bells
Clear breaking from cathedral towers,
The pedlar whistling o'er the moors,
The sunburnt reapers, merry corps,
With stooks behind, and grain before,
The huntsman cheering on his hounds-
Build up one sound of many sounds,
As instruments of divers tone,
The organ's temple-shaking groan,
Proud trumpet, cymbal's piercing cry,
Build one intricate harmony:

As smoke that drowns the city's spires
Is fed by twice a million fires;
As midnight draws her windy grief
From sob and wail of bough and leaf;
And on those favourable days

When earth is free from mist and haze,
And heaven is silent as an ear
Down-leaning, loving words to hear,
Stray echoes of the world are blown
Around those pinnacles of stone
That hold the blue of heaven alone-
The saddest sound beneath the sun,
All human voices blent in one.

And purely gleams the crystal well
Amid the silence terrible.
On heaven its eye is ever wide
At morning and at eventide.
And as a lover in the sight

And favour of his maiden bright
Bends, till his face he proudly spies
In the clear depths of upturned eyes-
The mighty heaven above it bowed
Looks down, and sees its crumbling cloud,
Its round of summer blue immense,
Drawn in a yard's circumference ;
And lingers o'er the image there
Than its own self more purely fair.

Whence come the waters garnered up
So clearly in that rocky cup?

They come from regions higher far,

Where blows the wind and shines the star.

The silent dews that heaven distils

At midnight on the lonely hills;

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The shower that all the mountain dims,
On which the lordly rainbow swims;
The torrents from the thunder-gloom,
Let loose as by the stroke of doom,
The whirling waterspout, that cracks
Into a hundred cataracts,

Are swallowed by the thirsty ground,
And day and night without a sound
Through banks of marle and belts of ores,
They filter through its million pores,
Losing each foul and turbid stain:
And fed by many a trickling vein,
The well, through silent days and years
Fills slowly, like an eye with tears.

III.

RETURN.

Ah me! as wearily I tread

The winding hill-road, mute and slow,
Each rock and rill are to my heart
So conscious of the long-ago.
My passion with its fulness ached;
I filled this region with my love;
Ye listened to me, barrier crags,
Thou heard'st me singing, blue above.
O never can I know again

The sweetness of that happy dream,
But thou remember'st, iron crag,
And thou remember'st, falling stream!
O look not so on me, ye rocks,
The Past is past and let it be;
Thy music, ever-falling stream,
Brings more of pain than joy to me.
O cloud, high dozing on the peak;
O tarn, that gleams so far below;
O distant ocean, blue and sleek,

On which the white sails come and go

Ye look the same; thou sound'st the same

Thou ever falling, falling stream—

Ye are the changeless dial-face,

And I the passing beam.

IV.

BLAAVIN.

As adown the long glen I hurried,

Like the torrent from fall to fall,
The invisible spirit of Blaavin

Seemed ever on me to call;

As I passed the red lake fringed with rushes,

A duck burst away from its breast,

And before the bright circles and wrinkles

Had subsided again into rest,

At a clear open turn of the roadway,

My passion went up in a cry,

For the wonderful mountain of Blaavin

Was heaving his huge bulk on high,
Each precipice keen and purple
Against the yellow sky.

ALEXANDER SMITH.

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HOLMBY HOUSE:

A Tale of Old Northamptonshire.

BY G. J. WHYTE MELVILLE,

AUTHOR OF 'DIGBY GRAND,' 'THE INTERPRETER,' ETC.

CHAPTER XXIII.

'THE TRUE DESPOTISM.'

TEVER to bear arms against

NEVE

the Parliament!-never to be a soldier again!-scarcely to have a right to draw a sword! Ah, Mary! life would be dear at such a price, were it not that you had offered it; were it not that your will, your lightest word, is omnipotent with me. But oh! how I long to hear the trumpets sounding a charge again, and to see the sorrel in headstall and holsters shaking his bit as he used to do. He's too good for anything but a charger. Oh, if I could but ride him alongside of Prince Rupert once more!'

Half ashamed of his enthusiasm, the speaker's colour rose, and he laughed as he glanced almost timidly at the lady he addressed.

She was tending some roses that drooped over the garden bench on which he sat. There was this attraction about Mary Cave that perhaps endeared her to the imagination more than all her wit and all her beauty-she was constantly occupied in some graceful womanly task, and fulfilled it in such a graceful womanly way. Were she writing a letter, or threading a needle, or engaged in any other trifling occupation, her figure seemed to take insensibly the most becoming attitude, her rich brown hair to throw off the light at the exact angle you would have selected for a picture, the roseate bloom to deepen into the very tint that accorded best with her soft winning eyes. It was not her intellect, though that was of no inferior class; nor her form and features, though both were dangerously attractive: it was her ways that captivated and enslaved, that constituted the deadliest weapon in the whole armoury of which, womanlike, she knew so well the advantage and the use.

As she pruned the roses and trained them downwards from their

stems, shaking a shower of the deli

cate pink petals into the sun, she looked like a rose herself-a sweet, blooming moss-rose, shedding its fragrance on all that came within its sphere; the type of pure loveliness and rich, bright, womanly beauty.

He thought so as he looked up at her, and his heart thrilled to the tones of her melodious voice. It was all over with him now—

Inch thick, knee-deep, o'er head and ears,-a forked one.

She knew her power, too, and made no sparing use of it. They must be either slaves or tyrants, these women; and like fire, they make good servants but bad mis

tresses.

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'You are better here than wasting your life in Gloucester gaol,' answered Mary, and you can serve the King as well with your head as with your hands. Any man with the heart of a man can be a soldier; there is not one in a million that will make a statesman. Do you

think I would have taken such care of you if I had thought you fit for nothing better than the front-rank of one of Prince Rupert's foolhardy attacks ?'

She asked the question with an inexpressibly mischievous and provoking air. She could not resist the temptation of teasing and irritating him on occasion; she loved to strike the keys, so to speak, and evoke its every sound, at whatever cost of wear and tear to the instrument itself. He winced, and his countenance fell at once, so she was satisfied, and went on.

'If you cannot serve the King on the sorrel's back, do you think you are of no use to the Queen at her need here in Exeter? That poor lady, with her infant daughter, has but few friends and protectors now. A loyal and chivalrous gentleman always finds his post of honour in

defending the weak. If you seek for danger you will find enough, and more than enough, in doing your duty by your Royal mistress -in fulfilling the orders, Major Bosville, that I shall have the honour of conveying to you.'

She laughed merrily and made him a grand courtesy as she spoke, spreading out her white robes with a mock and playful dignity. Mary did not often thus. unbend, and he could not but confess to himself that she was inexpressibly charming so; yet would he have been better pleased had she been in a more serious mood too.

He rose from the garden-bench and stood by her, bending down over the roses, and speaking in a low grave tone

'I am ready, as you know, none better, to sacrifice life and all for the King's cause. Do me the justice to allow that I have never yet flinched a hair's-breadth from difficulty or danger. I desire no better fate than to shed my blood for his Majesty and the Queen. If I may not draw my sword with my old comrades, I may yet show them how to die like a Cavalier. My life is of little value to any one,' he added in a somewhat bitter tone, 'least of all to myself; and why should I be regretted when so many that were nobler and wiser and better are forgotten!'

It was a random shaft, but it quivered in the bull's-eye. She shot a sharp quick glance at him. Did he mean it ? Was he too thinking, then, of Falkland? No! that pained, sorrowing countenance forbade the suspicion of any arrière pensée. Her heart smote her as she scanned it. She looked kindly and fondly at him.

'Are you nothing to me?' she said. 'Should not I miss you and mourn you, and oh! do you think I could do without you at all? Hush! here comes Lady Carlisle.'

In effect that lady's graceful figure, with its courtly gait and rustling draperies, was seen advancing up the gravel path to put an end to the tête-à-tête. Such interruptions are the peculiar lot of those who have anything very particular to communicate; but we do not take upon ourselves to affirm that

Mary's quick ear had not caught the sound of a door opening from Lady Carlisle's apartments ere she permitted herself to bestow on Humphrey such words of encou ragement as made the June sunshine and the June roses brighter and sweeter than roses and sunshine had ever seemed before.

With his loyal heart bounding happily beneath his doublet, and a light on his handsome face that Lady Carlisle-no mean judge of masculine attractions regarded with critical approval, he followed the two ladies into the antechamber of his Royal mistress, now seeking with her new-born baby an asylum in the still faithful town of Exeter, one of the few strongholds in the kingdom left to the Royal cause; and yet, alas! but a short distance removed from the contamination of rebellion, for Essex was already establishing his head-quarters at Chard, and but two-and-twenty miles of the loveliest hill and dale in Britain intervened between the stern Parliamentary General and the now vacillating and intimidated Queen.

It was a strange contrast to the magnificence of Whitehall, even to the more chastened splendours of Merton College, that quiet residence of majesty in the beautiful old town -the town that can afford to challenge all England to rival it in the loveliness of its outskirts and the beauty of its women. Exeter has always particularly plumed itself on the latter qualification; and many a dragoon of the present day, whose heart is no harder under its covering of scarlet and gold than was that of the chivalrous Cavalier in buff and steel breastplate, has to rue his death-wound from a shaft that penetrated all his defences, when shot deftly home by a pair of wicked Devonshire eyes. Of the pic-nics in its vicinity, of the drives home by moonlight-of the strolls to hear our band play,' and the tender cloakings and shawlings, and puttings on of goloshes afterwards (for in that happy land our natural enemies likewise enjoy the incalculable advantage of an uncertain climate and occasional showers), are not the results chronicled in every parish register in England ?-and

1859.]

The Queen's Court at Exeter.

do not the beadle at St. George's, Hanover-square, and other hymeneal authorities, know the reason why?'

6

The Queen occupied a large quiet house, that had formerly been a convent, on the outskirts of the town. Its roomy apartments and somewhat secluded situation made it a fitting residence for Royalty, particularly for Royalty seeking privacy and repose; while the large garden adjoining, in which the holy sisters had been wont to stroll and ponder, yearning, it may be, for the worldly sunshine they had left without the walls, formed a pleasant haunt for the Queen's diminished household, and a resort on the fine June mornings of which Mary and Humphrey, who were both early risers, did not fail to make constant

use.

Their duties about the Queen's person had of late been unusually light. The birth, under circumstances of difficulty and danger, of a daughter, whose arrival on the worldly stage seemed to augur the misfortunes that, beautiful and gifted as she was, dogged her to her grave, had confined Henrietta to her chamber, and precluded her from her usual interference in affairs of State. The instincts of maternity were in the ascendant, and what were crowns and kingdoms in comparison with that little pink morsel of humanity lying so helplessly in her bosom? Well is it for us that we cannot foresee the destinies of our children; merciful the blindness that shuts out from us the

long perspective of the future-the coming struggles we should none of us have courage to confront. Could Henrietta have foretold that daughter's fate, bound in her beauty and freshness for a weary lifetime to the worst of the evil dukes who bore the title d'Orleans, would she have hung over the tiny treasure with such quiet happiness? Would she have neglected all besides in the world at the very faintest cry of the little new-born Princess?

We must return to Humphrey Bosville and Mary Cave, and the terms of close friendship, to call it by no softer name, on which they now found themselves. Since his

169

rescue from imminent death by her exertions, his devotion to her had assumed, if possible, a more reverential character than before. To owe his life to a woman for whom he had felt a slight attachment, would have been an obligation rather galling and inconvenient than otherwise; but to owe his life to the woman whom alone of all on earth he had loved with the deep absorbing fervour of which such a nature was capable, brought with it a sensation of delight which was truly intoxicating. It was such an additional link to bind him to her for ever; it made him seem to belong to her now so thoroughly; it was such a good excuse for giving way to her most trifling caprices, and obeying her lightest whim. Come what might, he felt that they could never now be entirely independent of each other; so he entered the Queen's service immediately on his return to Oxford, giving up his commission in the royal army, and resigning his right to wear a sword, as indeed the terms of his parole enjoined, with as little hesitation as he would have displayed in jumping with his hands tied into the Isis, had Mary only told him to do the one instead of the other.

It was no small inducement either to serve his Royal mistress assiduously, that his situation in her household brought him into close and daily contact with his ladyelove. Probably at no period of his life before had Humphrey been so happy as during the few golden weeks of Henrietta's confinement at Exeter. To meet Mary day by day in the performance of his duty; to see her in every phase of courtly life, from the strict observance of etiquette to the joyous moments of relaxation, over which, nevertheless, the atmosphere of Royalty shed a certain refinement and reserve; to admire her ready tact and winning bearing in all the different relations of a courtier's life; and above all, to walk with her morning after morning in those happy gardens, feeling that she too enjoyed and counted on their half-hour of uninterrupted conversation, and was little less punctual at the trystingplace than himself; all this constituted an existence for which it was

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