Glen Luss and Ross-dhu, they are smoking in ruin, And the best of Loch Lomond lie dead on her side. Widow and Saxon maid Long shall lament our raid, Think of Clan-Alpine with fear and with woe; Lennox and Leven-Glen Shake when they hear agen, "Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!" Row, vassals, row, for the pride of the Highlands! Stretch to your oars, for the ever-green pine! O! that the rose-bud that graces yon islands Were wreathed in a garland around him to twine! O that some seedling gem, Worthy such noble stem, Honour'd and bless'd in their shadow might grow! Loud should Glen-Alpine then Ring from her deepmost glen, "Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!" SOLDIER, REST! (FROM THE LADY OF THE LAKE.) Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking; Dream of battle fields no more, Days of danger, nights of waking. In our isle's enchanted hall, Hands unseen thy couch are strewing, Fairy strains of music fall, Every sense in slumber dewing. No rude sound shall reach thine ear, Armour's clang, or war-steed champing, Trump nor pibroch summon here Mustering clan, or squadron tramping. Yet the lark's shrill fife may come At the daybreak from the fallow, And the bittern sound his drum, Booming from the sedgy shallow. Ruder sounds shall uone be near, Guards nor warders challenge here, Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing, Shouting clans, or squadrons' stamping. Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done, Sleep! the deer is in his den; Sleep! thy hounds are by thee lying; Sleep! nor dream in yonder glen, How thy gallant steed lay dying. SONG. (FROM THE PIRATE.) Love wakes and weeps O for music's softest numbers, For Beauty's dream, Soft as the pillow of her slumbers! Through groves of palm Fire-flies on the air are wheeling; The distant beds of flowers revealing. O wake and live! A shadow'd bliss the real excelling; From lattice peep, And list the tale that love is telling! THE HEATH THIS NIGHT. (FROM THE LADY OF THE LAKE.) The heath this night must be my bed, The bracken curtain for my head, My lullaby the warder's tread, Far, far, from love and thee, Mary; I may not, dare not, fancy now And all it promised me, Mary. JAMES MONTGOMERY. BORN 1771- DIED 1854. JAMES MONTGOMERY, the Christian poet, was born at Irvine in Ayrshire, November 4th, 1771. His father, John Montgomery, was a Moravian missionary, who died while propagating Christianity in the island of Tobago. James was educated at the Moravian settlements of Gracehill, Ireland, and Fulneck, in Yorkshire. In his sixteenth year he was placed in the shop of a baker at Mirfield in the vicinity of Fulneck, where, notwithstanding the occupation was uncongenial, he remained for a year and a half, when he obtained a situation with a shopkeeper at Wath, in the same county. This he relinquished at the expiration of a year, and proceeded to London. He had previously sent a manuscript to Harrison, a bookseller in Paternoster Row, who, while declining to publish it, praised his talents and took him into his establishment. I ness. I mention not this as a plea in extenuation of offences for which I bore the penalty of the law; I rest my justification, in these cases, now on the same grounds, and no other, on which I rested my justification then. mention the circumstance to the honour of the deceased, and as an evidence that, amidst all the violence of that distracted time, a better spirit was not extinct, but finally prevailed, and by its healing influence did indeed comfort those who had been conscientious sufferers." The mind of the amiable poet did not sink under the persecutions to which he was subjected; au contraire, some of his best productions were written during his confinement in York Castle. In 1797 appeared a series of beautiful pieces entitled "Prison Amusements." In 1805 he published his poem "The Ocean," and the year following appeared "The Wanderer in Switzerland, and other Poems." The Edinburgh Review denounced the volume in a style of "such authoritative reprobation as no mortal verse could be expected to survive;" yet it rapidly passed through four editions. The next production of Montgomery's was "The West Indies," a poem in four parts, written in honour of the abolition of the African slavetrade by the British legislature in 1807. In 1813 he published a more elaborate performance, "The World before the Flood," a poem in the heroic couplet, and extending to ten cantos. His pictures of the antediluvian patriarchs in their happy valley are particularly In 1792 he went to Sheffield as assistant in the office of the Register newspaper, conducted by Mr. Gales, and two years later, through the aid of a wealthy friend, became the proprietor of the paper, the name of which he changed to the Sheffield Iris. Amidst the excitement of that agitated period he was tried for printing a ballad celebrating the fall of the Bastille, which was interpreted into a seditious libel. Notwithstanding the perfect innocence of the poet's intentions he was found guilty, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment in the castle of York and to pay a fine of £20. During the same year he was condemned to a second imprisonment of six months for insert-touching and beautiful. ing in the columns of the Iris an account of a Our author's next poetical publication was riot, in which he was considered to have cast "Greenland," a poem in five cantos, giving a aspersions on one of the Sheffield magistrates. sketch of the Moravian Church in ancient days, "All the persons," says the poet writing in its revival in the eighteenth century, and the 1840, "who were actively engaged in the pro- origin of the missions by that people to Greensecutions against me in 1794 and 1795, are land. His last volume, "The Pelican Island, dead, and without exception they died at peace and other Poems," appeared in 1827. The with me. I believe I am quite correct in say principal poem is in blank verse, and was suging, that from each of them distinctly in the gested by a passage in Captain Flinders' voyage sequel I received tokens of good-will, and to Terra Australis, describing the existence of from several of them substantial proofs of kind- | the ancient haunts of the pelican in the small islands on the coast of Australia. It is characterized by great felicity of diction and expression, and altogether possesses more power than any of his earlier productions, although it never attained the same degree of popularity as his "Wanderer in Switzerland," which, notwithstanding the dictum of the Edinburgh Review at the date of its publication, "that in less than three years nobody would know the name of its author," has passed through sixteen editions. On his retirement in 1825 from the "invidious station" of editor of the Sheffield Iris, which he had maintained for the long period of thirty years, a public dinner, at which Earl Fitzwilliam presided, was given in his honour. On this happy occasion the poet “ran through the story of his life, even from his boyish days," when he came among them friendless and unknown, and spoke with pardonable pride of his success as an author. The general character and tendency of his poems were thus described in the course of his address: "I sang of war, but it was the war of freedom, in which death was preferred to chains. I sang the abolition of the slave trade, that most glorious decree of the British legislature at any period since the Revolution, by the first parliament in which you, my lord, sat as the representative of Yorkshire. Oh, how should I rejoice to sing the abolition of slavery itself by some parliament of which your lordship shall yet be a member! This greater act of righteous legislation is surely not too remote to be expected even in our own day. Renouncing the slave-trade was only ceasing to do evil,' extinguishing slavery will be learning to do well.' Again, I sang of love-the love of country, the love of my own country; for, 'Next to heaven above, Land of my fathers! thee I love; And, rail thy slanderers as they will, With all thy faults I love thee still.' the love of virtue, which elevates man to his true standard under heaven. I sang, too, the love of God, who is love. Nor did I sing in vain. I found readers and listeners, especially among the young, the fair, and the devout; and as youth, beauty, and piety will not soon cease out of the land, I may expect to be remembered through another generation at least, if I leave anything behind me worthy of remembrance. I may add, that from every part of the British empire, from every quarter of the world where our language is spokenfrom America, the East and West Indies, from New Holland (Australia) and the South Sea Islands themselves-I have received testimonials of approbation from all ranks and degrees of readers, hailing what I had done, and cheering me forward. I allude not to criticisms and eulogiums from the press, but to voluntary communications from unknown correspondents, coming to me like voices out of darkness, and giving intimation of that which the ear of a poet is always hearkening onward to catch— the voice of posterity." In 1830 and 1831 Mr. Montgomery was invited to deliver a course of lectures at the Royal Institution, on poetry and general literature, which he prepared for the press, and published in 1833. In addition to the works we have enumerated, he published Thoughts on Wheels, Climbing Boy's Soliloquy, and Original Hymns for Public, Private, and Social Derotion, which appeared in 1853. A pension of £150 was conferred upon the poet as an acknowledgment of his great services, literary and philanthropic, which he was long spared to enjoy. He died suddenly at his residence, The Mount, Sheffield, April 30, 1854, at the advanced age of eighty-three. He bequeathed liberal legacies to various public charities. As a man Montgomery was gentle and conciliatory; a warm friend, a generous promoter I sang likewise the love of home-its charities, of benevolent institutions, and of irreproachable endearments, and relationships-all that character; and as a poet, he is conspicuous for the makes Home, Sweet Home,' the recollection smoothness of his versification and fervent piety of which, when the air of that name was just pervading his productions. His fame was long now played from yonder gallery, warmed every confined to what is termed the religious world. heart throughout this room into quicker pul- till he showed, by his cultivation of different sations. I sang the love which man ought to styles of poetry, that neither his language nor bear towards his brother, of every kindred, taste was restricted to purely spiritual themes. and country, and clime upon earth. I sang Many of Montgomery's smaller poems enjoy a 1 popularity exceeded by but few contemporary | heart, there to be enshrined in hallowed reproductions. "He is essentially a religious poet," writes William Howitt; who adds, "It is what of all things upon earth we can well believe he would most desire to be; and that he is in the truest sense of the word. In all his poems the spirit of a piety profound and beautifully benevolent is instantly felt. Perhaps there are no lyrics in the language which are so truly Christian,-that is, which breathe the same glowing love to God and man, without one tinge of the bigotry that too commonly eats into zeal, as rust into the finest steel. The longer his fame endures, and the wider it spreads, the better it will be for virtue and for man." Another writer says, "With the exception perhaps of Moore, Campbell, and Hemans, I doubt if an equal number of the lyrics of any other modern poet have so completely found their way to the national membrance. One great merit which may be claimed for James Montgomery is, that he has encroached on no man's property as a poet: he has staked off a portion of the great common of literature for himself, and cultivated it according to his own taste and fancy.” Mrs. Sigourney, an American poetess, who visited England in 1840, and made the acquaintance of Montgomery, described him as small of stature, with an amiable countenance, and agreeable, gentlemanly manners. His conversation was unassuming, though occasionally enlivened by a vein of pleasantry. Some one of the company present happening to remark that they were not aware of his having been born in Scotland, he replied that he had left it in his early years, adding with naiveté, 'You know that Dr. Johnson has said there is hope of a Scotchman if you catch him young."" GREENLAND.1 The moon is watching in the sky; the stars The tide, o'er which no troubling spirits breathe, Hark! through the calm and silence of the scene, 1 In "Greenland" Mr. Montgomery appears for the first time to have found a theme at once calculated to be popular from the richness and variety of the poetic development of which it was susceptible, and from being perfectly in unison with his own strongly devotional cast of mind. . . . The descriptions are animated by the same spirit of reality and truth which dictated the idea of the poem. The vagueness which pervades the sketches of scenery in "The Wanderer in Switzerland" has vanished. Every line is expressive; every feature is clear and sharply defined as the objects themselves against the sky. -Edinburgh Review. Slow, solemn, sweet, with many a pause between, Celestial music swells along the air! No!-'tis the evening hymn of praise and prayer In heaven; and He, who sits upon the throne Is there a group more lovely than those three |