struggles between love and patriotism, are they not talked of in Chapter the Second ? (To be continued in our next.) SINGING ON THE ROAD OF LIFE. SINGING on the road of life, Their voices blending, Walked together through the strife, And branches bending, Two fair children, hand in hand, And bravely did the storm withstand. The wintry wind it whistled by With shrill complaining— A time for discontent and sadness, Singing on the road of life, With others blending, May we help them in their strife, Shall firmly darkest storms withstand. Bearing sorrows passing by With small complaining Believing joy is ever nigh And evil waning; Sharing sometimes earthly sadness, But breaking through, to higher gladness. IOTA. WHY IS THE GLORIOUS SKY SO BLUE? I. II. WHY is the glorious sky so blue? Sure a seraph came, wrapt in his sunbeam-dress, Searching earth for its holiest die, And he chose the patience of lovingness, In the mild blue grace of a maiden's eye; Why is the glorious sky so blue? 'Tis the goddesses laundresses far up on high- And they empty the buckets of water and blue, Bright sky, when we gaze on thy summer-time hue, SHAGGYQUILL. BYRON THE POET SCEPTIC. We have often thought that he who could write the history of a doubting mind, describing well the various transitions occuring in its perpetual backward and forward motion, between light and darkness, faith and denial,-truthfully describing its various manifestations, and the many phases assumed by the demon of scepticism when once it has there obtained a hold and a dominion, -would by so doing confer a lasting benefit upon society in general. A life of perpetual doubt, which means necessarily, a life of perpetual wavering, must be the most awful condition under which any human being can exist. We do not say but that a little doubt hath a wholesome effect upon a man, but a life-long scepticism is a life-long torment. We have all of us, at least all who have bestowed any kind of thought upon the great mystery of being,-experienced our seasons of doubt: troublous moments are they, replete with anguish to the pilgrim soul. We can only imagine from such times as these occurring in our own experience, as to what sort of life is a life of constant doubt. We have to devote ourselves in this brief paper, to a reconsideration of the character of Lord Byron, and it is to him that our introductory remarks have reference. Byron, as far as we can comprehend him, appears to have been the Poet-sceptic; though at the first glance the term appears to involve a contradiction. It was in Byron the existence of these two contradictory elements-poetry and scepticism-that, in a great measure, made him the extraordinary being that he was. He had all the intense love and the intense faith of the poet, he possessed all the dark hate and the gloomy doubt of the sceptic. His poetry was of God, his scepticism was of the world. In the great soul of him was waged an incessant conflict between the power of God and the power of the world,—a conflict on both sides equally maintained: the result was that the world made him a slave, and that God made him a hero. Notwithstanding, he was one of the most sincere of human beings; sincerity is usually the characteristic of the sceptical D mind; amidst the multitude of sins to be justly laid to his charge, insincerity cannot be found. He seems to have had no desire for concealment. Things which most men would make an effort to hide, Byron proclaimed in face of all the world, Whether his virtues or his vices, they were all one to him; he furnished the world with a perfect knowledge of them. Perhaps it is to this that we may attribute the popular notions respecting the character of Byron. The world usually judges of a man's character by actions lying on the surface, seldom by the motive power which produces those actions. In the case of Byron, men were furnished with a whole multitude of surface-characteristics, and that by himself. Hence probably of no man of whom so much is known, has so little been understood. Byron, we know very well, cared very little as to the world's opinion of his individual character; he despised the world, and with his usual sincerity he made no secret of that contempt. And yet he was a real world's-man; an individual embodiment of the spirit of his age, the representative of the democratic idea, that principle which the French writers, and in fact the writers generally of the age preceding Byron, had tended so greatly to foster, and which found its fullest developement in the wild extravagancies of the French Revolution. It would have been surprising if a man of Byron's peculiar constitution had not become tainted with the prevalent epidemic. Hence we find that although an aristocrat by birth and title, and inheriting all the blood and pride which we usually find connected with exalted rank, he is, nevertheless, one of the most powerful advocates of democracy that have in these times arisen. He throws out his sarcasm at Kings and Courts with no sparing hand; he denounces the shams and hypocrisies of the day in no measured terms; he would overthrow all supremacy of prince and priest; he would utterly destroy the throne, and devastate the sanctuary. His poetry is thoroughly democratic, and hence we find therein rather the music of tumult, rather the voice of the destroyer, than the calm prophetic dream of one who on the ruins of the old would build up a newer, a nobler, and a yet stronger edifice. As the poet, he longed for the emancipation of the race, he desired something that should supersede the present mock system of things but as the doubter, a veil of darkness obscured his mental vision, the sceptic was never a man to plan and to build. It has been well said by a popular writer, that, "Never in the history of the world has a great work been done by the doubters and deniers, -they never bettered the condition of humanity." So with Byron, each noble thought had its concurrent ignoble doubt, and whilst he compassed the destruction of Jericho, he had no strength to aid in the building up of Jerusalem. Perhaps there never existed any other man so peculiarly constituted as was Byron. He seems to realise that scriptural notion of a house divided against itself. He swayed to and fro like a pendulum between God and the Evil One. For ever when the great fount of life welled up within him, and the strong poet-faith yearned after the eternal spirit of all beauty, for ever when the Divine light gleamed athwart his path, beckoning him onward to holier and purer aspirations, the darkness would interpose, and the ghastly doubt overcloud his spirit, and like the lone solitary man mentioned in the American poem, as he pondered on the coming future, and longed earnestly to enter the blissful Aidem of his hope, the grizzly demon croaked in his ear its eternal "Never More." One of the most beautiful passages, (perhaps the most beautiful,) in the Childe Harold, is in a measure obscured by this characteristic scepticism; and a great and solemn lesson is partially veiled by the dubious thoughts which accompany it. "Son of the morning! rise, approach you here! "Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven- That little urn saith more than thousand homilies." And so to him the great fact of universal things remained through life a myth and a mist. It has been remarked of Byron that he could never describe more than two individual characters-the one a male personage, the other an embodiment of Byron's notion of woman. In his various poems, we are presented with new events, new names, but ever these two identical characters. The man is always Byron himself, the same moody, misanthropic, sceptical man, whether he appears as Conrad, or Lara, Cain, Childe Harold, or Manfred. It is probably in Manfred that we are presented with the most striking portraiture. A settled gloom of soul, a constant loathing of life, a contempt for the whole race of man, a half doubtful dread of futurity; these commingled with a pride and self reliance, and a sort of noble awfulness, are characteristics of Byron, developed more forcibly in the drama of Manfred than in any other of his poems. We shrink, as it were, terror-stricken from contact with such a being. Yet there are times in the perusal of his poetry, when we feel that we could almost love him; times when he appears no longer the terror and the hate; when he is the man with all a man's large-heartedness and intense human feeling; when he forgets his scorn and hate of the world, and opens out his heart to love and tenderness. How we yearn towards the lone solitary man, when he seems to throw but a shade of humanity into his song; when he seems to think there is some goodness in the world which he had missed of beholding; when in a better mood his voice loses its loud defiant tones, and becomes softened into a low plaintive wail; then he touches the very hearts of us, and melts our human nature into tears. Listen! "I have not loved the world, nor the world me; Nor coined my cheeks to smiles, nor cried aloud They could not deem me one of such; I stood Of thoughts, which were not their thoughts, and still could, "I have not loved the world, nor the world me; But let us part fair foes, I do believe, Though I have found them not, that there may be Words which are things, hopes which will not deceive,- Snares for the failing: I would also deem That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream. "My daughter! with thy name this song begun- |