description, with due caution, of the bower, in which Almansaris seeks to prevail over Huon-" Hier herrsschte ein tag," &c. Upon the whole, however, we can honestly bestow our commendation upon the Poetical Anthology, as a work, not merely useful to the German student, but interesting to the German reader, presenting, as it does, many beautiful selections from the best German poets.

THE PREMIER.*

We have, ere now, been taken with a title; opened volumes which promised much; been egregiously disappointed; laid the book by, and neither thought nor wrote about the matter afterwards. Shall we confess, that when we saw the announcement of the Premier, we were curious enough to wish to see the book, more with a view to discover by what ingenuity the title was to be woven into the contents, than with a hope of finding aught to justify it? It was so. We had seen fifty titles, which had so little to do with the writing, that had they all been interchanged, no one would have discovered the error, for they were all equally unconnected with the plan and arrangement of the contents.

We have read the Premier. We have again and again perused the almost living characters which figure in its pages. We have followed the author into the Council, and the Houses of Parliament. We have dived into state secrets never intended to be published, and dissected some curious political plans never intended to be developed; we have penetrated the arcana of diplomatic policy, never before known beyond the Sanctum Sanctorum of the minister. Will our readers expect, then, that the Premier is a dry political work? They will be surprised to find that it involves as deeply interesting a narrative as ever treated of private life. Do they expect that the incidents of domestic circles fritter away the importance of the political facts? They will look almost aghast at whole pages, which seem to go over hallowed ground, on which the interests of rival states rest their foundations. There are portraits of living characters drawn with a powerful and appalling fidelity; there are keys which open men's hearts, and show their virtues and their vices with a fearful truth: there are openings through which the reader may take views which have never met the public eye till now. They are not the vain specu lations of an empty head, nor the theoretical fancies of a mere caterer of novelty, which fill the pages; and we doubt, if the opening of despatches, which contained a declaration of war, would cause the excitement, the surprise, the consternation, which a few of our great political leaders of the last quarter of a century would experience, at the unexpected reading of some of these chapters.

Oh for some of the particulars of Cabinet intrigues! How they open our eyes to the hitherto hidden mysteries of Government! How they account for what appeared unaccountable measures! How they explain, even to us who, though within the halo which is shed around the throne, were content to wonder and remain ignorant; ascribing half the measures which were adopted before our eyes to causes the very opposite of truth. But we are ourselves getting into a labyrinth of politics: we must turn for relief to one of those little sketches, which show at once, as heroines of romance have already been described ten thousand times, a spice of humour and some originality:

But Louisa Ardent-how shall I describe her? In the jargon of metaphysics, which give us unintelligible abstractions, and words for ideas? or in the language of a voluptuary, expatiating upon the grosser charms of finely-rounded limbs, love-darting eyes, and lips of provocation which might fling hot blood into the austere check of an anchorite? or, shall I play the sculptor, and talk of finely-chiselled features, a brow of alabaster, and a flowing outline of Grecian beauty? I abjure each and all of these severally approved and universally adopted methods; and for these reasons

In the first place, it would be as easy for a limner to catch the likeness of a flash of

* Unpublished, Three Volumes, Colburn and Bentley.

lightning, as for metaphysics to fix the changing qualities of any woman's mind (that is, of women who have minds, for the angels of creation, like the lords of creation, are not necessarily so provided), and absolutely easier, than to confine within a definition those of Louisa Ardent. In the second place, she did not possess a single feature, no, nor as far as I know, a single limb, which, taken separately, could lay claim to the epithet of beautiful, and therefore there was nothing about her which a statuary would have selected as his model. Let the reader judge for himself.

Louisa Ardent was rather below than above what is considered the middle height in females; that is, she could hardly exceed five feet five, and probably was three quarters of an inch under that standard. She was moreover-what shall I call it-corpulent.By no means. Stout? No. Inclined to embonpoint ?-No, not exactly that neither. Plump? Aye, that is the word; but then, I hate to employ it, when speaking of the fairest and loveliest of God's works; it is so like describing a partridge, or a sucking-pig. I would rather say she was not slender, and leave the imagination to fill up the picture.

Her hair was raven black, profuse and glossy, without the aid of Macassar oil, or of that miraculous unguent prepared by the well-known benefactor of bald beaux and lyingin ladies. Her eyes were as jetty as her locks,' and more lustrous, for they sparkled incessantly with the scintillations of a mind that was as restless as the ocean; but they were neither large, nor languishing, nor laughing eyes; they were simply such eyes as you could not look upon without feeling that they must belong to a tongue whose "lightest word" would not "harrow up the soul," but reach it (according as the mood of the speaker might incline) in the language of deep passion, nimble repartee, sharp irony, or overwhelming ridicule. Her nose was neither Roman nor Grecian. Indeed, it partook of no decidedly national character, and could hardly be said to have a distinctive appellation in the nomenclature of noses; it was essentially an anonymous nose; and yet it had been impossible to look at it where it was, without calling it a pretty nose; though, disjointed from the rest of the features, it might have been doubtful, at first sight, whether it were a nose at all. Her mouth was small, with a curl of the lips when she smiled, that had something half scornful, half mocking, in the expression. Her teeth were regular and white; her complexion rather pale; the general cast of her countenance pensive and thoughtful; her forehead, so much of it as was visible through clustering ringlets, fair, and intellectual in its character; her mien eminently graceful, because simple, natural, and moulded by her mind, instead of the grotesque hand of fashion; and lastly, her manners were attractive without being obtrusive, the result of constant self-possession, free from the broad, coarse, masculine assurance of vulgar self opinion.

Such was Louisa Ardent to the eye. What she was to the imagination, to the feelings, to the head and heart of those who approached her, it would be somewhat more difficult to describe.

He

From her childhood, she had been the treasured gem of her father's love. He soon discovered what rich materials there were to work with; what dangerous ones, too, if they fell into the hands of an unskilful artificer. He took her to himself, therefore. formed her mind; he moulded her heart. He drew forth from the former all its latent energies, and assigned to them the tasks which would make them wax in strength and beauty, as she herself ripened with years. He watched, with feverish anxiety, the unfolding passions of the latter; surrounded them with safeguards, where they were exposed to assaults; enforced a severe discipline, where there was a proneness to run into wild luxuriance; reared, with a delicate hand, those timid impulses which sneaping winds would have blighted for ever, but which, thus gently encouraged, thus tenderly cultivated, blossomed into virtues of exquisite grace and loveliness; and he uprooted, fearlessly, the few rank and idle weeds which such a soil might be expected to nourish.

Having introduced Miss Louisa Ardent to our readers, after the plan of a divertisement between the two acts of an opera, we shall proceed to matters of another kind; not that we shall "stand upon the order of our quotings but quote." The following is one of the numerous allusions to the press: it is the more valuable, as it conveys the sentiments of the writer, put into the mouth of a cabinet minister, whose mind soared above the petty considerations which sway too many of our less liberal functionaries:

"There is no man living," said Cranstoun, "who utterly disdains to plead to the tribunal of the public press more than I do; and I am as deeply sensible as any man, I think, of all its practicable mischief; but were it in my power, by a word, to destroy its existence, with the certainty of not producing any one of those evils which I know must follow, I would sooner lay my head upon the block than pronounce that word. It has great and noble elements in its compositions; mighty energies, which neither are nor

can be always the ministers of evil. When, however, they are so, confront them, master them, or be mastered by them, even as is our destiny with all the other evils of this world; but it were as wise to desire that MAN should be blotted out of creation, because of the vices of MEN, and thus renounce a Newton to escape a Thurtell, as to wish the destruction of a privilege capable, in its right use, of arresting the desolating progress of religious, moral, and political error, or of redeeming from it nations now groaning beneath the triple bondage, because, in the necessarily irregular motions of so vast an agent, we are in constant peril of violent collision."

"The collision," said Sir George, " is perpetual."

"And for this obvious reason," added Cranstoun. "The opportunities for performing signal services are rare; the inclination, I am afraid, still more rare; but the indulgence of paltry feelings, the triumph of rancorous ones; the base longings of a degenerate nature, are things which he who covets, may enjoy when he pleases. We may wish it were otherwise

forced."

66

"As it might be," interrupted Sir George, "if the laws were more vigorously enand surround the insignificance of a hired libeller with the dignity of a state martyr; or drag from its obscurity a lampoon, by inviting the whole country to read it at our expense."

," said Cranstoun,

Aye,"

But while we are upon the subject of the public press, we must give a powerful sketch of the profligate portion of that important engine:

"Bah!" exclaimed the Colonel. "What are the vices, what are the follies, they single out? Do they fly at noble quarry? Do they aim at patrician vice? Do they humble the proud offender? Do they strip the mask from the guilty face that shows itself in courts, and palaces, and high offices, and important trusts? Do they warn us against exalted delinquents? Do they pluck out the corruption that lurks beneath a star? No-they do none of these things. But is there some individual moving along the sequestered path of private life, some being hitherto unknown (and by unknown, I would designate any one not conspicuously prominent in the circle of fashionable or public life), or, if known, known already as a nuisance, and therefore sufficiently notorious-some one whom early, but long redeemed, errors, may have contaminated, or who may still be the victim of weakness that shade, but hardly sully, his character, him they seize on -him they torture-him they rack with devilish ingenuity.

"And when they are once upon the scent, they hunt through every channel for intelligence. Discarded servants-irritated dependents-baffled sharpers-needy parasites— tradesmen discontinued for their extortions-or an exasperated friend, eager to wreak insidious vengeance, are among their most valuable sources of information. When the mass, flowing thus through innumerable corrupt channels, comes into the hands of the writer, it still has to receive some little infusion of poison, some leaven of malice, some touches of perfidious heightening, before it is fit for his purpose.

"At length, all is done. The monster is matured, and it goes forth. What are the consequences? Perhaps a tale of slander is revived which destroys a wife's felicity, a husband's honour. Perhaps a tale is told, once true, though no longer so, and which now, for the first time, meets their eyes whose happiness sickens at the reading. It may disclose the forgotten errors of the husband and the father, and wring the hearts of a blameless wife and unoffending children. An unguarded expression, a heedless action, is magnified and perverted. Offended honour is roused. Suspicion is awakened; and it fixes somewhere, perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, as to the individual who has been the betrayer. The seeds of contention, hatred, contempt, are sown: jealousies are excited, quarrels embittered, and animosities revived. And all for what? That society, forsooth, may be benefited by becoming acquainted with the vices or follies of Mr. B ——Mrs. H.---Captain X.-or Sir Richard D."

"You have made out a strong case, Asper," said Charles, musing.

"Truth is always strong," replied the Colonel. "But the general effect of the picture will be heightened by two or three additional touches, curiously illustrative of the system I have endeavoured to expose; and with them I shall finish. Money being, first and last, the sole object of these despicable marauders upon the pocket, their mode of proceeding varies according to circumstances. The callous and the needy knave, they equally pass by; for the one will not, and the other cannot, purchase their silence. It is the middle, compound character, the man who, without firmness enough to avoid error, has feeling enough to be ashamed of it, that they fatten upon. Many there are who would rather be pillaged of ten, twenty, thirty, nay fifty, or a hundred guineas, than have some foolish action, some idle fault, dragged before the public eye. Others, of timid disposition, would do as much

to avoid the imputation, even, of things of which they know themselves to be guiltless. They shrink dismayed from the blasting touch of these profligate censors, who magnify what is venial, and invent what is wanting; and they propitiate them as the African does the devil, from terror of their evil natures. But their policy is bad. There was a time when we used to buy off our invaders. What was the consequence? They came every year, and every year demanded a higher price to go away. At last we fought them; and they soon grew tired of coming for their wages. While these pure and exalted moralists are worshipped with gold, they exact frequent devotions; but let our offerings be of iron, and they care not how seldom they are sacrificed to."

There are in the volumes before us some subjects which we dare hardly approach. We could not do justice by extracts, and we must fail if we attempt a description. How many great men figure in the arena we can hardly say; but the bold and fearless way in which they are brought forward; their actions scanned; their motives, purposes, and projects laid open, may be seen in the following portrait. Who will fail to recognise in every line the character for whom it is intended?

The Duke of Strathsay was a man whom fortune had spoiled. A junior branch of a decayed noble family, which had crept through three or four generations of titled obscurity, he embraced the army as his profession. Whether accident determined this choice, or whether he was impelled to it by those mysterious inclinings of the mind, which sometimes seem to shape our path at its outset, with a sort of prescient adaptation of means to great ends, is as little capable of satisfactory elucidation, as whether Alexander or Cæsar could have been other than they were. Certain it is, the military exploits of the Duke of Strathsay were such as would transmit his name to posterity with a renown unsurpassed by that of any conqueror of ancient or modern times. With his sword, he had carved his passage to every honour of the peerage, while rewards were showered upon him with prodigal gratitude by foreign potentates, who had benefited, directly or indirectly, by his unexampled triumphs. But the warrior exhausts at last the elements of his own glory. He subdues all his enemies; he conquers peace; and then comes the sluggish current of his life, creeping along the vale of time, to be honoured, in its close, less for what it is, than for the remembrance of what it was in the beginning.

It pleased the Duke of Strathsay, as it has pleased other great men in all ages, to believe there is only one road to fame; and that he, consequently, who has fairly entered upon it, has nothing to do but go on as far as he likes. The compendious and self-deluding logic by which we demonstrate, to our own entire satisfaction, that the same qualities which have raised us to distinction as fiddlers, are sufficient to entwine our brows with the wreath of poesy, is by no means confined to those adepts in dabbling, who have a touch at every thing, for the sake of showing the universality, or the versatility, of their genius.

Poor Goldsmith, who broke his shins in trying to fling his legs about like the fantoccini, was a sample of human nature in general. Few men are ambitious of doing that which they know they can do; but almost every man has an inveterate itch to try his own hand at that which others do well. So it was with his Grace of Strathsay. When there was an end of campaigning, he turned statesman; and, because he had shone in camps, he determined to shine in cabinets. His services abroad had been too distinguished to permit of his being wholly overlooked at home. He was invited to join the Earl of Villopoer's government; not less from a desire to gratify his inclination for appearing in the character of a politician, than from a conviction that the country would be pleased to see its idolized hero thus honoured, in being called to the councils of his sovereign. A high military appointment, as best suited to his talents and experience, and most conducive to the interests of the state, was therefore conferred upon him.

Had the Duke of Strathsay lived in the times of our Henries and Edwards, he would infallibly have done one of two things-placed a crown upon his head, or his head upon a block. He was the man, in such an age, to have played the part of the Warwicks, Somersets, and Buckinghams of English history. He had a restless, grasping ambition, equal to any enterprise that might lead to personal aggrandizement; one who would depose his king to make way for himself, but without the generous loyalty and heroic devotion which would have died in defence of his king. With an inflexible but contracted mind, he was equally incapable, as a statesman, of conceiving great objects, or of being turned aside from any he did conceive. This the million called firmness and decision of character. The discerning few took it as the index of an arrogant and presumptuous one. The truth is, he was fitted only for one sphere. He had been trained in camps; his nurture had been in the field of battle, and he had no art to fuse the stern virtues of the soldier into the pliant wisdom of cabinets, or the amenity of courts,

Such a man, living under the eclipse of a dull routine of unnoticed official duties, would find food for his active ambition only in a constant struggle to emerge from it. His wealth, his rank, his station in the government, and more than all, perhaps, his splendid renown, surrounded him with flatterers, who gave him, in full chorus, the echo of his own thoughts. What he was to himself, he was to them. Could it be doubted, indeed, that he who had conquered kingdoms, was competent to rule them? Certainly not, provided we allow the converse of the proposition, that they who rule kingdoms must be competent to conquer them. But there were others-men of a far different stamp -men who would have laughed to scorn this senseless gabble-who yet lent themselves to its influence over the Duke of Strathisay for purposes of their own. They wanted a name—a bright, unsullied name, beneath which they might array themselves. They found this; and in requital for its use, they permitted him to find in them sycophants for their own ends, and slaves for his.

We shall now lay before our readers, a domestic scene in the library of Sir George Arden, who, having lived for thirty years in uninterrupted felicity with a wife in every way devoted to him, found her, on his return from a walk, suffering under the bitter pangs of a false conviction that he-who had been her solace and comfort so many years-had wronged her:

Heavens! what ravages the mind will make in a few short moments! Take the happiest human face that was ever bathed in the sunny smiles of perfect joy, and let the dark waters of some hideous sorrow roll over the heart within, and as the lightning's flash scathes in an instant the verdant pride of the noblest oak amid a thousand, so will the tide of sudden grief wither the roses on the cheek, and dim the lustre of the brightest eves! It had been even thus with Lady Ardent. The spell was broken; the charm was dissolved; the faith of thirty years had crumbled into dust beneath the tale of poison which her brother had conveyed. She wrestled with the seeming truth, like one to whom truth was worse than death. She fought hard for victory, and gave up the struggle only when the last foot of ground on which she stood was wrested from her. The proofs appeared so conclusive, the facts so certain, and so fortuitously elicited; the chain of circumstances so complete, that idiotcy itself could hardly refuse its assent to the one inevitable, the one miserable, the one maddening conclusion!

And then, too, when that conclusion was no longer disputed, what a host of minor auxiliaries rushed in to fortify it! Things which had passed unheeded at the time, or, if heeded, not with suspicion as to their motives, were now remembered and fitted to the occasion which had revived the recollection of them. The letter which Sir George received and read in her presence, without mentioning from whom it came, and his refusal to accompany herself and Louisa, either in the carriage or on foot, were found to correspond with the day and hour of Caroline's flight. His petulant manner, when she mentioned the general's invitation to the marriage; nay, his very words: "I know that to-morrow has been fired for that melancholy ceremony," were recalled, to be examined by a new test, which disclosed at once their then latent meaning. Every day, since the elopement of Miss Asper, he had been from home-and alone; while at his return, a guarded silence was maintained as to where he had been. Both herself and Louisa had noticed that his temper of late had become irritable, and the period of the change corresponded exactly with that of Caroline's disappearance. That very morning, too, he had hurriedly concealed from her sight the paper which contained the paragraph about himself. These, and many other circumstances, came unbidden, as it were, into her mind, to swell the current of her thoughts against her husband!

In the overflowing of that current, her husband was by her side. He saw she looked ill; but suspicion was so foreign to his character, that even here, where it was hardly possible to mistake the cause of what he saw, not a thought of himself, of Caroline, or of the rumours of a busy and malicious world, obtruded itself, or mingled with his anxious inquiries as to the reason of her evident indisposition. There was the same tenderness in his voice, the same sympathy in his manner, as on all similar occasions.

"Why hangs this cloud upon your brow?" said he, taking her hand. "Whence this wan and faded cheek? And these inflamed eyes, yet moist with fresh tears? Your looks alarm me, love."

"I am not well," replied Lady Ardent, sighing deeply, and averting her countenance from him.

"I am sure you are not; and I fear your illness is serious-more serious than you will allow yourself to own."

"I trust not. I shall be better shortly;" making a faint effort to rally from her despondency.