vidual, the characteristic in painting, is that which is in a
marked manner-the ideal is that which we wish anything
to be, and to contemplate without measure and without end.
The first is truth, the last is good. The one appeals to the
sense and understanding, the other to the will and the affec-
tions. The truly beautiful and grand attracts the mind to it
by instinctive harmony, is absorbed in it, and nothing can
ever part them afterwards. Look at a Madonna of Ra-
phael's: what gives the ideal character to the expression,-
the insatiable purpose of the soul, or its measureless content
in the object of its contemplation! A portrait of Vandyke's
is mere indifference and still-life in the comparison: it has
not in it the principle of growing and still unsatisfied desire.
In the ideal there is no fixed stint or limit but the limit of
possibility: it is the infinite with respect to human capaci-
ties and wishes. Love is for this reason an ideal passion.
We give to it our all of hope, of fear, of present enjoyment,
and stake our last chance of happiness wilfully and despe-
rately upon it. A good authority puts into the mouth of one
of his heroines-

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep!"-

How many fair catechumens will there be found in all ages
to repeat as much after Shakspeare's Juliet!

CHARLES BRANDON, AND MARY OF FRANCE.
THE fortune of Charles Brandon was remarkable. He
was an honest man, yet the favourite of a despot. He was
brave, handsome, accomplished, possessed even delicacy of
sentiment; yet he retained the despot's favour to the last.
He even had the perilous honour of being beloved by his
master's sister, without having the least claim to it by birth;||
and yet, instead of its destroying them both, he was allow-
ed to be her husband.
Charles Brandon was the son of Sir William Brandon,
whose skull was cleaved at Bosworth by Richard the Third,
while bearing the standard of the Duke of Richmond.
Richard dashed at the standard, and appears to have been
thrown from his horse by Sir William, whose strength and
courage, however, could not save him from the angry des-
peration of the king.

But Time, whose whecles with various motion runne,
Repayes this service fully to his sonne,
Who marries Richmond's daughter, born betweene
Two royal parents, and endowed a queene.

Sir John Beaumont's Bosworth Field.

The father's fate must have had its effect in securing the fortunes of the son. Young Brandon grew up with Henry the Seventh's children, and was the playmate of his future king and bride. The prince, as he increased in years, seems to have carried the idea of Brandon with him like that of a second self; and the princess, whose affection was not hindered from becoming personal by anything sisterly, nor on the other hand allowed to waste itself in too equal a familiarity, may have felt a double impulse given to it by the improbability of her ever being suffered to become his wife. Royal females in most countries have certainly none of the advantages of their rank, whatever the males may have. Mary was destined to taste the usual bitterness of their lot; but she was repaid. At the conclusion of the war with France, she was married to the old king Louis the Twelfth, who witnessed from a couch the exploits of her future husband at the tournaments. The doings of Charles Brandon that time were long remembered. The love between him and the young queen was suspected by the French court; and he had just seen her enter Paris in the midst of a gorgeous procession, like Aurora come to marry Tithonus. Brandon dealt his chivalry about him accordingly with such irresistible vigour, that the dauphin, in a fit of jealousy, secretly introduced into the contest a huge German, who was thought to be of a strength incom. parable. But Brandon grappled with him, and with seeming disdain and detection so pummelled him about the head with the hilt of his sword, that the blood burst through the vizor. Imagine the feelings of the queen, when he came and made her an offering of the German's shield! Drayton, in his Heroical Epistles, we know not on what authority, tells us, that on one occasion during the combats, perhaps this particular one, she could not help crying out,

||

"Hurt not my sweet Charles," or words to that effect. He then pleasantly represents her as doing away suspicion by falling to commendations of the dauphin, and affecting not to know who the conquering knight was;-an ignorance not very probable; but the knights sometimes disguised themselves purposely.

The old king did not long survive his festivities. He
died in less than three months, on the first day of the year
1515; and Brandon, who had been created Duke of Suffolk
the year before, re-appeared at the French court, with let.
ters of condolence, and more persuasive looks. The royal
widow was young, beautiful, and rich: and it was likely
that her hand would be sought by many princely lovers;
but she was now resolved to reward herself for her sacrifice,
and in less than two months she privately married her first
love. The queen, says a homely but not mean poet
(Warner, in his Albion's England) thought that to cast too
many doubts
Were oft to erre no lesse

Than to be rash: and thus no doubt
The gentle queen did guesse,
That seeing this or that, at first
Or last had likelyhood,

A man so much a manly man
Were dastardly withstood.
Then kisses revelled on their lips,
To either's equal good.

Henry showed great anger at first, real or pretended; but he had not then been pampered into unbearable self-will by a long reign of tyranny. He forgave his sister and friend; and they were publicly wedded at Greenwich on the 13th of May.

It was during the festivities on this occasion (at least we believe so, for we have not the chivalrous Lord Herbert's Life of Henry the Eighth by us, which is most probably the authority for the story; and being a good thing, it is omitted, as usual, by the historians) that Charles Brandon gave himself, and conciliating towards the jealous. He appear a proof of the fineness of his nature, equally just towards ed, at a tournament, on a saddle-cloth, made half of frize and half of cloth-of-gold, and with a motto on each half. One of the mottos ran thus:

TRANSLATION FROM THE POETS. INTELLIGENT men of no scholarship, on reading Horace, Theocritus, and other poets, through the medium of translation, have often wondered how those writers obtained their glory. And they well might. The translations are no more like the original, than a walking-stick is like a flowering bough. It is the same with the versions of Euripides, of Eschylus, of Sophocles, of Petrarch, of Boileau, &c. &c., and in many respects of Homer. Perhaps we could not give the reader a more brief, yet complete specimen of the way in which bad translations are made, than by selecting a well-known passage from Shakspeare, and turning it into the common-place kind of poetry that flour. ished so widely among us till late years. Take the passage, for instance, where the lovers in the Merchant of Venice seat themselves on a bank by moonlight :

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Now a foreign translator, of the ordinary kind, would dilute and take all taste and freshness out of this draught of poetry, in a style somewhat like the following:—

With what a charm, the moon, serene and bright,
Lends on the bank its soft reflected light!

Sit

we, I pray; and let us sweetly hear
The strains melodious with a raptured ear;
For soft retreats, and night's impressive hour,
To harmony impart divinest power.

THE CLOISTER.
COMMITTEE Solus.

On, most beset of Brigadiers! Most civil of military men! (for half a firm, the most yielding partner of my acquaintance!) when, oh responsible General, will you get through with your particular callers and come to confab! True, I have dined and can wait! True, there are jointletters to answer! True, I can listen, and look out into the back-yard! Hark! Syphax, my black boy, loquitur. Syphax. (To the General.)" Shall I cut out them favourable notices from the exchanges, sir?"

ness to criticism. Long live our (Bull-judice) " abomina-
tions." Long live some who spit and whittle, some who
eat eggs out of wine-glasses and sit on four chairs, some
who wear long naps to their hats, some who eat peas with
who are civil to unprotected ladies in stage-coaches! Pre-
a knife, some who pour out their tea into saucers, and some
serve something that is not English, oh my countrymen!
(Enter the Brigadier.)

Brigadier. Forgive me, my dear boy,-what is that I see written on your paper about Russia?

"The Russie men are round of bodies, fully-faced,
The greatest part with bellies that overhang the waist,
Flat-headed for the most, with faces nothing faire,

But brown by reason of the stoves and closeness of the aire."
So says old Tuberville, the traveller-and now to business.

Jot!

Committee.-What?

Brigadier.-Jot-that we are glad to offer to the patrons of the "Mirror Library" a book they will thank us for, at

every line-" THE PLEA OF THE MIDSUMMER FAIRIES," and other admirable poems, pregnant with originality and richness, by THOMAS HOOD. His poetry is the very attar, the aroma, the subtlest extract of sweet imagination. EUGENE ARAM is one of those included in this volume.

Brigadier.-Those favourable notices, Syphax!” Heavens! What an unfeeling man! For the love of pity, corrupt not the innocent grammar of the lad, my dear Brigadier! Out of seven black boys sent me for trial by the keeper of an intelligence-office, six, to my disgust, spoke with the painful accuracy of Doctor Pangloss. The last, my inestimable Syphax, whom that finished Brigadier would fain bring to his own level of heartless good gram. mar—was ignorant (virtuous youth!) even of the sexes of pronouns! He came to me innocent. And, I need not say to any writer-to any slave of the rule-tied pen-to any man cabinned, cribbed, confined, as are public scribblers to case and number, gender and conjugation, participle present, and participle past-I need not say, to such a vicBrigadier.-Glad to be sorry that Parke Godwin's fine tim, what an oasis in the desert of perfection was the green analytical mind and bold foundry of cast-iron English are spot of a black boy's cacology! Oh, to the attenuated ear not freighted with a more popular subject than Fourrierism of the grammar-ridden!-to the tense mood of unerring-worthy though the theme be of the regard of angels mood and tense-what a luxury is an erring pronounwhat a blessed relief from monotony is a too-yielding verb, seduced, from its singular antecedent, by a contiguity of plural! Out on perfectionists! Out on you, flaw-less Brigadier! Correct your own people, however! Inveigle not my Syphax into rhetoric! Ravish not from my use the one variation, long-sought and chance-found, from the maddening monotone of good grammar!

Committee. What else are you glad of?

whose approbation don't pay. Politics should be at a lift to deserve the best energies of such a writer-but they are not, and so he turns to philosophy.

Committee. But he should play Quintus Curtius and write up politics to his level, man! The need is more immediate than the need of Fourierism!

Brigadier. My dear boy, give away nothing but what is saleable. Gifts, that would not otherwise have been money in your purse, are not appreciated-particularly advice. We love Godwin-let us love his waste of ammunition, if it please him to waste it! Committee.

Ye melancholy bells,

Ye know not why ye're ringing-
See not the tear-drops springing
From sorrows that ye bring to mind,
Ye melancholy bells.

And this brings to my mind, (if I get time to jot it down before the Brigadier comes to cloister,) a long-settled conviction of my own, that the corrections in American manners brought about by the criticisms of Trollope and others, have been among the worst influences ever exercised upon "Then let him weep, of no man mercified," the country. Gracious Heaven! are we to have our national features rasped off by every manner-tinker who if his brains be not coinable to gold. I would make a merchooses to take up a file! See how it affects the English chant of genius! The world has need of brains like Godto laugh at their bloat of belly and conceit, their cockney win's, and need makes the supply into commodity, and ignorance and their besotted servility to rank. Do they commodity is priceable. That's the logic by which even brag less and drink less beer?-Do they modify their Bow-my poor modicum is made to thrive. Apropos-what do bell dialect one hair, or whip off their hats with less magical you think of these lines on "bells," by Duganne-a poet I celerity when spoken to by a lord? Not a bit! They will should say. be English till they are smothered with Russians-English ghosts, (those who die before England is conquered by Russia,) with English manners, at doomsday. They are not so soft as to be moulded into American pottery, or German pottery, or French pottery, because an American, or a German, or a Frenchman, does not find them like his own country's more common utensils! Where do national features exist? Not among well-bred people! Not where peas are eaten with a fork and soup-plates left untilted by the hungry! All well-bred people are monotonously alike— whatever their nation and whatever the government they have lived under. Differences of manners are found below this level, and the mistake-the lamentable mistake-lies in submitting to correct this low level by the standard of coxcombs! What a picture would be without shadewhat music would be without discords-what life would be without something to smile at-what anything would be without contrast-that are we becoming by our sensitive

And thus ye will ring on-
To-day, in tones of sadness;
To-morrow, peals of gladness;
Ye'll sound them both, yet never feel
A thrill of either one.

Ye ever-changing bells!
Oh many ye resemble,
Who ever throb and tremble,
Yet never know what moves them so-
Ye ever-changing bells.

Brigadier.-Kernel-ish and quaint. But, my dear boy,
"twilight, soft arbiter

"Twixt day and night,"

is beginning to blur the distinctness of the checks on that apron drying upon the line in the back-yard. Shall we go

to tea?