We might have enriched this article with many more of the biographical and other notices scattered through these volumes, and by so doing, would have rendered it undoubtedly of far higher interest than by the critical enquiries in which we have indulged; but we were anxious to pay a debt long due to one, the character and tendency of whose powers we, in common with many others, misconstrued at his outset ;-one whose mode of life, and habits of mind and thinking, ever involving him actively in the vortex of the existing world, and in the controversies as well as gaieties of the day, have made many unwilling to recognize his real position in the rank of poets from hostility or prejudice, and many more from real inability to conceive the power of genius to live on the agitated surface of society, as well as on the most tranquil lake which ever was haunted by the Muses ; one whom many pronounced at first too trifling to succeed, and then too successful in his own day to abide the test of another; but whose position in the brilliant band of the poets of this age, (now so rapidly vanishing from us one by one, and unreplaced,) is already fixed beyond the power of criticism or of Timeunrivalled in one, exquisite department of his art, delightful in many. (EDINBURGH REVIEW.) THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD: AN EXTRAVAGANZA. CHAP. I She tawght 'hem to sew and marke, Of her they were ful fayne. ROMANCE OF EMARE. A schoolmistress ought not to travel- No, madam except on the map. There indeed she may skip from a blue continent to a green one-cross a pink isthmus -traverse a Red, Black, or Yellow Sea, land in a purple 'island, or roam in an orange desert, without danger or indecorum.-There she may ascend dotted rivers, sojourn at capital cities, scale alps, and wade through bogs, without soiling her shoe, rumpling her satin, or showing her ankle. But as to practical travelling, real journeying and voyaging---oh, never, never, never! How, sir! Would you deny to a Preceptress all the excursive pleasures of locomotion ? By no means, miss. In the midsummer holidays, when the days are long, and the evenings are light, there is no objection to a little trip by the railway say to Weybridge or Slough provided always Well, sir? That she goes by a special train, and in a first-class carriage. Ridiculous! Nay, madam-consider her pretensions. She is little short of a Divinity. Diana, without the hunting! A modernized Minerva! The Representative of Womanhood in all its purity! Eve, in full dress, with a finished education! A Model of Morility -a Pattern of Propriety the Fugle-woman of her Sex! As such she must be perfect. No medium performance -no ordinary good-going, like that of an eight-day clock or a Dutch dial-will suffice for the character: she must be as correct as a prize chronometer. She must be her own Prospectus personified. Spotless in reputation, immaculate in her dress, regular in her habits, refined in her manners, elegant in her carriage, nice in her taste, faultless in her phraseology, and in her mind-like-like Pray what, sir? Why, like your own chimney-ornament, madam — a pure crystal fountain, sipped by little doves of alabaster. A sweet pretty comparison! Well, go on, sir. Now look at travelling. At the best it is a rambling, scrambling, shift-making, strange-bedding, irregular-mealing, foreign-habiting, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy sort of process. At the very least, a female must expect to be rumpled and dusted; perhaps draggled, drenched, torn, and roughcasted and if not bodily capsized or thrown a summerset, she is likely to have her straitest-laced prejudices upset, and some of her most orthodox opinions turned topsyturvy. An accident of little moment to other women, but to a schoolmistress productive of a professional lameness for life. Then she is certain to be stared at, jabbered at, may be jeered at, and poked, pushed and hauled at, by curious or officious foreigners to be accosted by perfect and imperfect strangersin short, she is liable to be revolted in her taste-shocked in her religious principles, disturbed in her temper, disordered in her dress, and deranged in her decorum. But you shall hear the sentiments of a Schoolmistress on the subject. Oh! a made-up letter! No, miss, a genuine epistle, upon my literary honour. Just look at the writing-the real copybook running-handnot at uncrossed not an i undotted not an illegitimate flourish of a letter, but each j and g and y turning up its VOL. JII. 7 tail like the pug dogs, after one regular established pattern. And pray observe her capitals. No sprawling K with a kicking leg no troublesome W making a long arm across its neighbour, and especially no great vulgar D unnecessarily sticking out its stomach. Her H, you see, seems to have stocks, her I to have worn a backboard, and even her S is hardly allowed to be crooked! CHAP. II. « Phoo! phoo! it's all banter, » exclaims the Courteous Writer. But possibly, my good sir, you have never seen that incomparable schoolmistress, Miss Crane, for a Miss she was, is, and would be, even if Campbell's Last Man were to offer to her for the preservation of the species. One sight of her were, indeed, as good as a thousand, seeing that nightly she retires into some kind of mould, like a jelly shape, and turns out again in the morning the same identical face and figure, the same correct, ceremonious creature, and in the same costume to a crinkle. But no - you never can have seen that She-Mentor, stiff as starch, formal as a Dutch hedge, sensitive as a Daguerreotype, and so tall, thin, and up-right, that supposing the Tree of Knowledge to have been a poplar, she was the very Dryad to have fitted it! Otherwise, remembering that unique image, all fancy and frost work-so incrusted with crisp and brittle particularities—so bedecked allegorically with the primrose of prudence, the daisy of decorum, the violet of modesty, and the lily of purity, you would confess at once that such a Schoolmistress was as unfit to travel unpacked as a Dresden China figure! » Excuse me, sir, but is there actually such a real personage? Real! Are there Real Natives Real Blessings to MothersReal Del Monte shares, and Real Water at the Adelphi? Only call her instead of Crane, and she is a living, breathing, flesh and blood, skin and bone individual! Why, there are dozens, scores, hundreds of her, Ex-Pupils, now grown women, who will instantly recognise their old Governess in the form with which, mixing up Grace and Gracefulness, she daily prefaced their rice-milk, batter-puddings, or raspberrybolsters. As thus: «For what we are going to receive-elbows, elbows!-the Lord make us-backs in and shoulders down-truly thankful -and no chattering-amen. " CHAP. III. « But the letter, sir, the letter- » "The professional epistle,» adds a tall, thin Instructress, genteelly in at the elbows, but shabbily out at the fingers' ends, for she has only twenty pounds per annum, with five quarters in arrear. " The schoolmistress's letter, cries a stumpy Teacher-only a helper, but looking as important as if she were an educational coachwoman, with a team of her own, some five-andtwenty skittish young animals, without blinkers, to keep straight in the road of propriety. " " The letter, sir, » chimes in a half-boarder, looking, indeed, as if she had only half-dined for the last half-year. " Oh, I do so long, exclaims one who would be a stout young woman if she did not wear a pinafore, oh, I do so long to hear how a governess writes home! » ་་ " Come, the letter you promised us from that paragon, Miss Crane." That's true. Mother of the Muses, forgive me! I had forgotten my promise as utterly as if it had never been made. If any one had furnished the matter with a file and a rope ladder it could not have escaped more clearly from my remembrance. A loose tooth could not more completely have gone out of my head. A greased eel could not more thoroughly have slipped my memory. But here is the letter, sealed with pale blue wax, and a device of the Schoolmisstress's own invention-namely, a note of interrogation (?) with the appropriate motto, of an answer required.» And in token of its authenticity, pray observe that the cover is duly stamped, except that of the foreign postmark only the three last letters are legible, and yet even from these one may swear that the |