one morning, after writing the previous night some cheerful and affectionate letters to her friends in England, she was (October 16) found dead in her

Birthplace of Miss Landon.

room, lying close to the door, having in her hand a bottle which had contained prussic acid, a portion of which she had taken. From the investigation which took place into the circumstances of this melancholy event, it was conjectured that she had undesigningly taken an overdose of the fatal medicine, as a relief from spasms in the stomach. Having surmounted her early difficulties, and achieved an easy competence and a daily extending reputation, much might have been expected from the genius of L. E. L., had not her life been prematurely terminated. Her latter works are more free, natural, and forcible than those by which she first attracted notice.

Change.

I would not care, at least so much, sweet Spring,
For the departing colour of thy flowers-
The green leaves early falling from thy boughs-
Thy birds so soon forgetful of their songs-
Thy skies, whose sunshine ends in heavy showers;
But thou dost leave thy memory, like a ghost,
To haunt the ruined heart, which still recurs
To former beauty; and the desolate

Is doubly sorrowful when it recalls
It was not always desolate.

When those eyes have forgotten the smile they wear now,

When care shall have shadowed that beautiful brow;
When thy hopes and thy roses together lie dead,
And thy heart turns back pining to days that are fled-

Then wilt thou remember what now seems to pass
Like the moonlight on water, the breath-stain on glass;
Oh! maiden, the lovely and youthful, to thee,
How rose-touched the page of the future must be !

By the past, if thou judge it, how little is there
But blossoms that flourish, but hopes that are fair;

And what is thy present? a southern sky's spring, With thy feelings and fancies like birds on the wing.

As the rose by the fountain flings down on the wave
Its blushes, forgetting its glass is its grave;
So the heart sheds its colour on life's early hour;
But the heart has its fading as well as the flower.

The charmed light darkens, the rose-leaves are gone,
And life, like the fountain, floats colourless on.
Said I, when thy beauty's sweet vision was fled,
How wouldst thou turn, pining, to days like the dead!

Oh! long ere one shadow shall darken that brow, Wilt thou weep like a mourner o'er all thou lov'st now; When thy hopes, like spent arrows, fall short of their mark;

Or, like meteors at midnight, make darkness more dark:

When thy feelings lie fettered like waters in frost,
Or, scattered too freely, are wasted and lost:
For aye cometh sorrow, when youth hath passed by-
Ah! what saith the proverb? Its memory's a sigh.

[From The Improvisatrice."]

I loved him as young Genius loves,

When its own wild and radiant heaven Of starry thought burns with the light, The love, the life, by passion given.

I loved him, too, as woman loves-
Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn:
Life had no evil destiny

That, with him, I could not have borne ! I had been nursed in palaces;

Yet earth had not a spot so drear, That I should not have thought a home In Paradise, had he been near! How sweet it would have been to dwell, Apart from all, in some green dell Of sunny beauty, leaves and flowers; And nestling birds to sing the hours! Our home, beneath some chestnut's shade, But of the woven branches made: Our vesper-hymn, the low wone wail The rose hears from the nightingale; And waked at morning by the call Of music from a water-fall. But not alone in dreams like this, Breathed in the very hope of bliss, I loved my love had been the same In hushed despair, in open shame. I would have rather been a slave, In tears, in bondage by his side, Than shared in all, if wanting him,

This world had power to give beside!
My heart was withered-and my heart
Had ever been the world to me:
And love had been the first fond dream,
Whose life was in reality.

I had sprung from my solitude,
Like a young bird upon the wing,
To meet the arrow; so I met

My poisoned shaft of suffering.
And as that bird, with drooping crest
And broken wing, will seek his nest,
But seek in vain: so vain I sought
My pleasant home of song and thought
There was one spell upon my brain,
Upon my pencil, on my strain;
But one face to my colours came;
My chords replied to but one name
Lorenzo-all seemed vowed to thee,
To passion, and to misery!

[Last Verses of L. E. L.]

[Alluding to the Pole Star, which, in her voyage to Africa, she had nightly watched till it sunk below the horizon.]

A star has left the kindling sky

A lovely northern light;
How many planets are on high,
But that has left the night.

I miss its bright familiar face, It was a friend to me; Associate with my native place, And those beyond the sea.

It rose upon our English sky,
Shone o'er our English land,1
And brought back many a loving eye,
And many a gentle hand.

It seemed to answer to my thought,
It called the past to mind,

And with its welcome presence brought
All I had left behind.

The voyage it lights no longer, ends

Soon on a foreign shore;

How can I but recall the friends
That I may see no more?

Fresh from the pain it was to part-
How could I bear the pain?
Yet strong the omen in my heart
That says-We meet again.

Meet with a deeper, dearer love;
For absence shews the worth
Of all from which we then remove,
Friends, home, and native earth.

Thou lovely polar star, mine eyes Still turned the first on thee, Till I have felt a sad surprise,

That none looked up with me.

But thou hast sunk upon the wave,
Thy radiant place unknown;
I seem to stand beside a grave,
And stand by it alone.

Farewell! ah, would to me were given
A power upon thy light!
What words upon our English heaven
Thy loving rays should write!

Kind messages of love and hope
Upon thy rays should be;

Thy shining orbit should have scope
Scarcely enough for me.

Oh, fancy vain, as it is fond,
And little needed too;

My friends! I need not look beyond
My heart to look for you.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

Besides her dramatic writings, previously noticed, MISS BAILLIE presented to the world at different times a sufficient quantity of miscellaneous poetry, including songs, to constitute a single volume, which was published in 1841. The pieces of the latter class are distinguished by a peculiar softness

Wanton droll, whose harmless play
Beguiles the rustic's closing day,
When drawn the evening fire about,
Sit aged Crone and thoughtless Lout,
And child upon his three-foot stool,
Waiting till his supper cool;
And maid, whose cheek outblooms the rose,
As bright the blazing fagot glows,
Who, bending to the friendly light,
Plies her task with busy sleight;

Come, shew thy tricks and sportive graces,
Thus circled round with merry faces.
Backward coiled, and crouching low,
With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe,
The housewife's spindle whirling round,
Or thread, or straw, that on the ground
Its shadow throws, by urchin sly
Held out to lure thy roving eye;
Then, onward stealing, fiercely spring
Upon the futile, faithless thing.
Now, wheeling round, with bootless skill,
Thy bo-peep tail provokes thee still,

409

As oft beyond thy curving side
Its jetty tip is seen to glide;
Till, from thy centre starting fair,
Thou sidelong rear'st, with rump in air,
Erected stiff, and gait awry,
Like madam in her tantrums high:
Though ne'er a madam of them all,
Whose silken kirtle sweeps the hall,
More varied trick and whim displays,
To catch the admiring stranger's gaze.

The featest tumbler, stage-bedight,
To thee is but a clumsy wight,
Who every limb and sinew strains
To do what costs thee little pains;
For which, I trow, the gaping crowd
Requites him oft with plaudits loud.
But, stopped the while thy wanton play,
Applauses, too, thy feats repay:

For then beneath some urchin's hand,
With modest pride thou tak'st thy stand,
While many a stroke of fondness glides
Along thy back and tabby sides.
Dilated swells thy glossy fur,
And loudly sings thy busy pur,
As, timing well the equal sound,

Thy clutching feet bepat the ground,
And all their harmless claws disclose,
Like prickles of an early rose;
While softly from thy whiskered cheek
Thy half-closed eyes peer mild and meek.
But not alone by cottage-fire

Do rustics rude thy feats admire;
The learned sage, whose thoughts explore
The widest range of human lore,
Or, with unfettered fancy, fly
Through airy heights of poesy,
Pausing, smiles with altered air
To see thee climb his elbow-chair,
Or, struggling on the mat below,
Hold warfare with his slippered toe.
The widowed dame, or lonely maid,
Who in the still, but cheerless shade
Of home unsocial, spends her age,
And rarely turns a lettered page;
Upon her hearth for thee lets fall
The rounded cork, or paper-ball,
Nor chides thee on thy wicked watch
The ends of ravelled skein to catch,
But lets thee have thy wayward will,
Perplexing oft her sober skill.
Even he, whose mind of gloomy bent,
In lonely tower or prison pent,
Reviews the coil of former days,
And loathes the world and all its ways;
What time the lamp's unsteady gleam
Doth rouse him from his moody dream,
Feels, as thou gambol'st round his seat,"
His heart with pride less fiercely beat,
And smiles, a link in thee to find
That joins him still to living kind.

Whence hast thou, then, thou witless Puss,
The magic power to charm us thus ?
Is it, that in thy glaring eye,
And rapid movements, we descry,
While we at ease, secure from ill,
The chimney-corner snugly fill,
A lion, darting on the prey,
A tiger, at his ruthless play?
Or is it, that in thee we trace,
With all thy varied wanton grace,
An emblem viewed with kindred eye,
Of tricksy, restless infancy?
Ah! many a lightly sportive child,
Who hath, like thee, our wits beguiled,

To dull and sober manhood grown,
With strange recoil our hearts disown.
Even so, poor Kit! must thou endure,
When thou becomest a cat demure,
Full many a cuff and angry word,
Chid roughly from the tempting board.
And yet, for that thou hast, I ween,
So oft our favoured playmate been,
Soft be the change which thou shalt prove,
When time hath spoiled thee of our love;
Still be thou deemed, by housewife fat,
A comely, careful, mousing cat,
Whose dish is, for the public good,
Replenished oft with savoury food.

Nor, when thy span of life is past,
Be thou to pond or dunghill cast;
But gently borne on good man's spade,
Beneath the decent sod be laid,

And children shew, with glistening eyes,
The place where poor old Pussy lies.

[From 'Address to Miss Agnes Baillie on her
Birthday.']

[In order thoroughly to understand and appreciate the following verses, the reader must be aware that the author and her sister, daughters of a former minister of Bothwell on the Clyde, in Lanarkshire, lived to an advanced age constantly in each other's society. Miss Agnes Baillie still (1859) survives.]

Dear Agnes, gleamed with joy and dashed with tears O'er us have glided almost sixty years

Since we on Bothwell's bonny braes were seen,

By those whose eyes long closed in death have been-
Two tiny imps, who scarcely stooped to gather
The slender harebell on the purple heather;
No taller than the foxglove's spiky stem,
That dew of morning studs with silvery gem.
Then every butterfly that crossed our view
With joyful shout was greeted as it flew ;
And moth, and lady-bird, and beetle bright,
In sheeny gold, were each a wondrous sight.
Then as we paddled barefoot, side by side,
Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde,*
Minnows or spotted parr with twinkling fin,
Swimming in mazy rings the pool within.
A thrill of gladness through our bosoms sent,
Seen in the power of early wonderment.

A long perspective to my mind appears,
Looking behind me to that line of years;
And yet through every stage I still can trace
Thy visioned form, from childhood's morning grace
To woman's early bloom-changing, how soon!
To the expressive glow of woman's noon;
And now to what thou art, in comely age,
Active and ardent. Let what will engage
Thy present moment-whether hopeful seeds
In garden-plat thou sow, or noxious weeds
From the fair flower remove, or ancient lore
In chronicle or legend rare explore,
Or on the parlour hearth with kitten play,
Stroking its tabby sides, or take thy way
To gain with hasty steps some cottage door,
On helpful errand to the neighbouring poor-
Active and ardent, to my fancy's eye
Thou still art young, in spite of time gone by.
Though oft of patience brief, and temper keen,
Well may it please me, in life's latter scene,

To think what now thou art and long to me hast been.

* The Manse of Bothwell was at some considerable distance from the Clyde, but the two little girls were sometimes sent there in summer to bathe and wade about.

"Twas thou who woo'dst me first to look Upon the page of printed book,

That thing by me abhorred, and with address
Didst win me from my thoughtless idleness,
When all too old become with bootless haste
In fitful sports the precious time to waste.
Thy love of tale and story was the stroke
At which my dormant fancy first awoke,
And ghosts and witches in my busy brain
Arose in sombre show a motley train.
This new-found path attempting, proud was I
Lurking approval on thy face to spy,

Or hear thee say, as grew thy roused attention, 'What! is this story all thine own invention?'

Then, as advancing through this mortal span, Our intercourse with the mixed world began; Thy fairer face and sprightlier courtesyA truth that from my youthful vanity Lay not concealed-did for the sisters twain, Where'er we went, the greater favour gain; While, but for thee, vexed with its tossing tide, I from the busy world had shrunk aside. And now, in later years, with better grace, Thou help'st me still to hold a welcome place With those whom nearer neighbourhood have made The friendly cheerers of our evening shade.

The change of good and evil to abide,
As partners linked, long have we, side by side,
Our earthly journey held; and who can say
How near the end of our united way?
By nature's course not distant; sad and 'reft
Will she remain-the lonely pilgrim left.
If thou art taken first, who can to me
Like sister, friend, and home-companion be?
Or who, of wonted daily kindness shorn,
Shall feel such loss, or mourn as I shall mourn?
And if I should be fated first to leave

This earthly house, though gentle friends may grieve,
And he above them all, so truly proved
A friend and brother, long and justly loved,
There is no living wight, of woman born,

Who then shall mourn for me as thou wilt mourn.

Thou ardent, liberal spirit! quickly feeling The touch of sympathy, and kindly dealing With sorrow or distress, for ever sharing The unhoarded mite, nor for to-morrow caringAccept, dear Agnes, on thy natal-day, An unadorned, but not a careless lay. Nor think this tribute to thy virtues paid From tardy love proceeds, though long delayed. Words of affection, howsoe'er expressed, The latest spoken still are deemed the best: Few are the measured rhymes I now may write; These are, perhaps, the last I shall indite.

WILLIAM KNOX-THOMAS PRINGLE.

WILLIAM KNOx, a young poet of considerable talent, who died in Edinburgh in 1825, aged thirtysix, was author of The Lonely Hearth, Songs of Israel, The Harp of Zion, &c. Sir Walter Scott thus mentions Knox in his diary: 'His father was a respectable yeoman, and he himself succeeding to good farms under the Duke of Buccleuch, became too soon his own master, and plunged into dissipation and ruin. His talent then shewed itself in a fine strain of pensive poetry.' Knox thus concludes his Songs of Israel:

My song hath closed, the holy dream

That raised my thoughts o'er all below,
Hath faded like the lunar beam,
And left me 'mid a night of woe-

To look and long, and sigh in vain For friends I ne'er shall meet again.

And yet the earth is green and gay;
And yet the skies are pure and bright;
But, 'mid each gleam of pleasure gay,

Some cloud of sorrow dims my sight: For weak is now the tenderest tongue That might my simple songs have sung.

And like to Gilead's drops of balm,

They for a moment soothed my breast; But earth hath not a power to calm My spirit in forgetful rest, Until I lay me side by side

With those that loved me, and have died.

They died-and this a world of woe,
Of anxious doubt and chilling fear;

I wander onward to the tomb,

With scarce a hope to linger here: But with a prospect to rejoin

The friends beloved, that once were mine.

THOMAS PRINGLE was born in Roxburghshire in 1788. He was concerned in the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine, and was author of Scenes of Teviotdale, Ephemerides, and other poems, all of which display fine feeling and a cultivated taste. Although, from lameness, ill fitted for a life of roughness or hardship, Mr Pringle, with his father, and several brothers, emigrated to the Cape of Good Hope in the year 1820, and there established a little township or settlement named Glen Lynden. The poet afterwards removed to Cape Town, the capital; but, wearied with his Caffreland exile, and disagreeing with the governor, he returned to England, and subsisted by his pen. He was some time editor of the literary annual, entitled Friendship's Offering. His services were also engaged by the African Society, as secretary to that body, a situation which he continued to hold until within a few months of his death. In the discharge of its duties he evinced a spirit of active humanity, and an ardent love of the cause to which he was devoted. His last work was a series of African Sketches, containing an interesting personal narrative, interspersed with verse. Mr Pringle died on the 5th of December 1834. The following piece was much admired by Coleridge:

Afar in the Desert.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the present, I turn to the past;
And the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And the shadows of things that have long since fled,
Flit over the brain like the ghosts of the dead-
Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon-
Day-dreams that departed ere manhood's noon-
Attachments by fate or by falsehood reft-
Companions of early days lost or left-
And my Native Land! whose magical name
Thrills to my heart like electric flame;

The home of my childhood-the haunts of my prime;
All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time,
When the feelings were young and the world was new,
Like the fresh bowers of Paradise opening to view!
All-all now forsaken, forgotten, or gone;
And I, a lone exile, remembered of none,
My high aims abandoned, and good acts undone-
Aweary of all that is under the sun;

With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan,
I fly to the Desert afar from man.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,
With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife;
The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear;
And the scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear;
And malice and meanness, and falsehood and folly,
Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy;
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high,
And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh-
Oh, then there is freedom, and joy, and pride,
Afar in the Desert alone to ride!

There is rapture to vault on the champing steed,
And to bound away with the eagle's speed,
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand-
The only law of the Desert land—
But 'tis not the innocent to destroy,
For I hate the huntsman's savage joy.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;
Away-away from the dwellings of men,

By the wild-deer's haunt, and the buffalo's glen;
By valleys remote, where the oribi plays;
Where the gnoo, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze;
And the gemsbok and eland unhunted recline
By the skirts of gray forests o'ergrown with wild vine;
And the elephant browses at peace in his wood;
And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood;
And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will

In the Vey, where the wild ass is drinking his fill.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
O'er the brown Karroo where the bleating cry
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
In fields seldom freshened by moisture or rain;
And the stately koodoo exultingly bounds,
Undisturbed by the bay of the hunter's hounds;
And the timorous quagha's wild whistling neigh
Is heard by the brak fountain far away;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste;
And the vulture in circles wheels high overhead,
Greedy to scent and to gorge on the dead;
And the grisly wolf, and the shrieking jackal,
Howl for their prey at the evening fall;
And the fiend-like laugh of hyenas grim,
Fearfully startles the twilight dim.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
Away-away in the wilderness vast,

Where the white man's foot hath never passed,
And the quivered Koranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan :
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear;
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
And the bat flitting forth from his old hollow stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot :
And the bitter melon, for food and drink,

Is the pilgrim's fare, by the Salt Lake's brink:
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Nor reedy pool, nor mossy fountain,
Nor shady tree, nor cloud-capped mountain,
Are found-to refresh the aching eye:
But the barren earth and the burning sky,
And the black horizon round and round,
Without a living sight or sound,
Tell to the heart, in its pensive mood,
That this is-Nature's Solitude.

And here while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the caverned stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone,
And feel as a moth in the Mighty Hand
That spread the heavens and heaved the land-
A 'still small voice' comes through the wild
(Like a father consoling his fretful child)
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear-
Saying, 'Man is distant, but God is near!'

ROBERT MONTGOMERY.

The REV. ROBERT MONTGOMERY obtained a numerous circle of readers and admirers, although his poetry was stilted and artificial, and was severely criticised by Macaulay and others. The glitter of his ornate style, and the religious nature of his subjects, kept up his productions (with the aid of incessant puffing) for several years, but they have now sunk into neglect. His principal works are, The Omnipresence of the Deity, Satan, Luther, Messiah, and Orford. He wrote also various religious prose works, and was highly popular with many persons as a divine. He was preacher at Percy Chapel, Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, London, and died in 1855, aged forty-seven.

[Description of a Maniac.]

Down yon romantic dale, where hamlets few Arrest the summer pilgrim's pensive view— The village wonder, and the widow's joy— Dwells the poor mindless, pale-faced maniac boy: He lives and breathes, and rolls his vacant eye, To greet the glowing fancies of the sky; But on his cheek unmeaning shades of woe Reveal the withered thoughts that sleep below! A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods, He loves to commune with the fields and floods: Sometimes along the woodland's winding glade, He starts, and smiles upon his pallid shade; Or scolds with idiot threat the roaming wind, But rebel music to the ruined mind! Or on the shell-strewn beach delighted strays, Playing his fingers in the noontide rays: And when the sea-waves swell their hollow roar, He counts the billows plunging to the shore; And oft beneath the glimmer of the moon, He chants some wild and melancholy tune; Till o'er his softening features seems to play A shadowy gleam of mind's reluctant sway.

Thus, like a living dream, apart from men, From morn to eve he haunts the wood and glen; But round him, near him, wheresoe'er he rove, A guardian-angel tracks him from above! Nor harm from flood or fen shall e'er destroy The mazy wanderings of the maniac boy.

[The Starry Heavens.]

Ye quenchless stars! so eloquently bright,
Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night,
While half the world is lapped in downy dreams,
And round the lattice creep your midnight beams,
How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes,
In lambent beauty looking from the skies!
And when, oblivious of the world, we stray
At dead of night along some noiseless way,
How the heart mingles with the moonlit hour,
As if the starry heavens suffused a power!
Full in her dreamy light, the moon presides,
Shrined in a halo, mellowing as she rides;
And far around, the forest and the stream
Bathe in the beauty of her emerald beam;