in order that by heroic deeds he may atone for his crime. At first he consents. "Blood will have more of blood," he observes, and that in war he shall have enough of it, "sowing mangled limbs upon blooddrenched fields." He will be a soldier, and win a crown for himself. But soon he recals all these promptings to further evil, and, though urged by Don Carlos, is not to be moved. The pride of the latter is aroused; he will not have his name disgraced by the public knowledge of such a crime connected with his family. He then challenges the Count to single combat, which the latter declines. The play terminates by the suicide of the Count and Countess.

Now as to subject: we have a lady falling in love with an individual while she is the wife of another. We have her marrying the murderer of her husband, whose friend he was, though she was not accessary to the crime. We have strange improbabilities as to the facts. Though the Spanish grandee challenges his son's murderer, they become afterwards somewhat reconciled. The married pair kiss the boy Otto, for they have resolved on suicide. Here I must quote the closing scene, where all seems wound up with the most consoling of human feelings. The wife and husband are alone:

Count. The hour has struck! give me, love, O give me

That which thou hast, and that of which I've need!

Lady. Yes, yes, I understand you; it is this! (Drawing a dagger.)
Count. Thou didst always keep it near thy heart!

Lady. Thou shalt have it, dear, until we meet again.
Hugo. Where sister, friend, and wife, are loved alike

With one pure love! There! Give me the steel and fly!

Lady. O husband! peace has left us long, and guilt,

Deep guilt, oppresses us alike; then, if we part,

I'll boldly take the lead on the unknown road

To Heaven's mercy! (She stabs herself.)

Count.

What a truth I uttered!

Murder engenders murder! I've destroyed,

Through this unhappy deed, all who approached me-
All who gave me their love! "Tis time, indeed,

That I should die; yes, love, I'll follow thee

From life's caverned obscure. (He kills himself.)

There are re many fine passages in this play, and several unique scenes. The wife and her paramour meeting in the vault of the deceased husband on the day or night of his funeral is a startling thing, the description and effect of which must plead against its probability. The charity with which crime is treated raises a great objection to tragic pieces, the plots of which are so extravagant and inimical to moral principle. But these are common things in Germany. The heaven of the writers of that country is one of the most accommodating places in the world, equally open to pure and innocent lovers, such as Paul and Virginia, and the nurturers of a passion as licentious as that of the hero and heroine of the tragedy of which I am making mention.

I fear, Mr. Editor, I have trespassed upon your space, but the abandonment of natural truth, and the admixture of things not to be palliated by the plea of agreeably surprising audiences or readers, induced me, in the zeal for honest fact, to write at such a length, lamenting that men of transcendent talents over the Rhine should be so continually regardless of moral effect. CYRUS REDDING.

STEREOSCOPIC GLIMPSES.

BY W. CHARLES KENT..

XII.- CHAUCER AT WOODSTOCK.

ON a sultry noon of summer,

In a long, long vanished year,
When the leaves were thick with verdure,
And the skies were blue and clear,
A great poet-soul lay basking
In the sunny atmosphere.

Half reclined by garden-terrace-
One plump hand on upbent knee,
With gold links the other toying-
Oh, a dreamful man looked he!
In his deep brown eyes thought dancing
To a merry minstrelsy.

Rich his vest of damson velvet,
Velvet darkly damson-red;
In a careless hood drawn upward,
Swathing half his hoary head;
Down in glossy folds descending
Round his languid limbs outspread.
From his crumpled cowl's sly covert,
Mark, how keen the glances thrown
Over all that affluent flowering waste,
Where calmly broods alone"
This Father of our English verse,,
Here couched as on a throne.

Here, 'neath yon lordly fane, where erst
Our royal Edward made,

In castled walls, his palace home,

'Mid green embowering shade,

Whence full many a leafy path reveals
Its sylvan colonnade.

Hark! a fountain clear is sparkling

Close behind yon privet wall;

You may see the shimmer of its spray,

And hear its tinkling fall

Near the blue-green droop of the peacock's plumes

Through its shrilling trumpet-call.

Thickly round him bloom the roses,

Roses red and roses white;

Palest roses, with a tinge of pink

Like a blonde's blush to the sight;

Yellow roses-damask roses,

Purpling in the golden light.

'Tis a nest of fragrant blossoms

Where the grey beard poet dreams;

"Tis the very bank for basking

Where the sunlight round him streams,

While before him troop rare fancies,
Lit by visionary gleams..

98

Comes the Knight upon his war-horse,
In half-armour, jingling by;
In his mail-stained fustian gipon,

His sheathed sword slung at his thigh;
His serene mouth dimpling sweetly
Under calm, sedatest eye.

Comes the Squire, a radiant stripling,
With an air of courtly grace,
In his curling locks luxuriant,

With youth's down upon his face;
His green surcoat bloom-embroidered,
Like some cowslip-sprinkled chase.
Comes the Monk on ambling palfrey
As a berry brown and sleek,
His bald pate all glazed and glistening,
Flushed his health-anointed cheek;
You may hear the supple leather
Of his boot on stirrup creak!

Not like his with rich furs purfled
Are the Friar's loose-hanging sleeves-
Filled with stores of homely baubles
Strown o'er every hearth he leaves:
'Neath grey cowl his blithe eyes sparkle
Like the stars on frosty eves.

Loitering comes the stalwart Yeoman-
One of Lincoln's forest-band-
Silver horn swung at his baldric,
Russet gauntlet on his hand;
In his grasp a mighty yew-bow,
Whence he drives his levin-brand.

Slouching, next, the tawny Shipman
Rears his rough but limber form;
Crisp as though with rime his ringlets,
Large his generous heart and warm;
Thick his beard all blowsed and shaken
By how many a briny storm!
Sauntering past the musing Poet,

Still they move, that motley throng-
Pilgrims from the Southwark Tabard,
Numbered in immortal song:
Towards thy holy shrine, à Becket,
Aye their shades shall glide along!

Here the Reeve, that man of choler,
With the lean and spindling shanks;
His shrewd eye demanding payment,
His sharp tongue ne'er craving thanks:
Here the burly, brawny Miller,

With his bold, salacious pranks

Yonder miller loud and brutal,
Clothed in white with hood of blue;
On his nose a wart with bristles,
Like his hair, of sanguine hue:
Hear him blow his roaring bagpipes,
And all chaos sounds anew!

Next appears the comely Franklin,
With his flowing milk-white beard,
All his ruddy visage beaming

With the smiles by churls revered,
Meat and drink still ever snowing
At his board, where all are cheered.
In quaint hat broad as a buckler,
On her sprightly, cantering roan,
With sweet trills of jocund laughter,
Comes one seldom seen alone-
'Tis the Wife of Bath, the siren,

With weird charms around her thrown.
Rough with whelks and knobs of scarlet,
See the Sompnour's scalded face!
Near the Pardoner's sallow features,
Where good wine ne'er left a trace,
Whence his hair, like yellow flax-lengths,
Streams without one touch of grace.

Yet another, not left nameless

'Mid that pilgrim throng, is seen;
"Tis the gentlest maiden-matron,
With the mild angelic mien;
'Tis the grey-eyed, rose-lipped Prioress,
"Tis-sweet Madame Eglantine!

These, among the soul-born shadows
Trooping in the sultry air,
Crowd, within the poet's vision,
All that summer-garden fair,
Fading out when at the brightest
In the noontide's amber glare.
Silvery chimes the plashing fountain,
Sparkling through its verdant screen,
Near the mound where still the peacock
Trails his train of azure-green,
All the parterre's floral glories.
Vying with its varying sheen.

From his tranquil reverie starting,
With a look of half surprise,
Now at bird with gorgeous plumage,
Now at buds of dappled dyes,
Downward turn the eltrich glances
Of that bard's yet dreamful eyes.

He has plucked a tiny blossom
From the moss-turf at his feet,
'Tis a gold-cored star of silver

On a thread-stalk green and sweet

Would you know the dainty floweret's name? 'Tis the little Marguerite!

Poised the while in sunlit silence,

Filled with bloom-scents warm and faint,

Lo! three butterflies on sportive wings,
That gold and purple paint,

Weave, in seeming, round the poet's cowl
An aureole like a saint.

971632

NEW COLONY OF CENTRAL BRITISH AMERICA.*

THE exploration of the central districts of British America, more especially of the long valleys of the two Saskatchewans and of the Assinniboine Rivers, as also of the basin of Lake Winnipeg, have not a mere geographical interest. The welfare of our transatlantic brethren, the progress of the great colonies of North America, the intercommunication of mankind, and the general onward movement of a universal civilisation, are alike concerned in such explorations. Beyond Lower and Upper. Canada, with the exception of the struggling settlement on the Red River, no progress has been made to the westward ever since 1763, when the lands discovered by Sebastian Cabot were finally ceded to the British. True that the North-Western Company have formed settlements, but it was their object to keep the country a hunting-ground for painted savages. There have been adventurous travellers and zealous missionaries who have traversed these lands, and these may justly lay claim to having been the pioneers of existing things, but up to recent times little real progress has been made-nothing that will for a moment compare with the magnitude of the interests involved, and the boundless promise to the future held out by these vast regions, as yet unclaimed by civilised man. It is not only that the valleys of the great rivers above mentioned, the far-spreading wood and lake districts, and the boundless meadows that roll between them, all teem with openings to different branches of industry-fishing, hunting, timber-cutting, cattle-breeding, and agriculture, with road-making, house-building, and the thousand-and-one wants of civilised life; it is that a new route presents itself through these neglected realms by which to encircle the globe, and whether our steamers plough the ocean from British Columbia to New Zealand and Australia, or to Japan, China, India, and the Cape, or whether Russia, progressing eastward, will bring the valley of the Amur into commercial communication with that of the Fraser River, and thus pave the way to the iron rail and steam bridges which shall girdle the whole globe in their embrace; still it is quite certain that not only is civilisation marching from east to west, but that British North America is the real available line (however long neglected) of communication between Western Europe and the Pacific Ocean, and when we come to think that in endeavouring to realise any such a desirable solution of a long-pending question, we are also advancing at every single step taken the material progress of Great Britain, Canada, Central British America, and British Columbia, extending colonisation, bringing new land and new territorial resources under contribution, and subjecting new natural lines of land and fluviatile communication to bear upon some main artery of transit, it must be felt that the importance of the questions thus involved are only equalled by their vastness.

The eastern route to Central Asia and the Indian Ocean presents some slight advantages of greater proximity, which no longer apply when we

* Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857, and of the Assinniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 1858. By Henry Youle Hind, M.A., F.R.G.S., Professor of Chemistry and Geology in the University of Trinity College, Toronto. Two Vols. 1860. Longman and Co.