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We are inclined to think this altogether the best poem written by Mr. Kay, which we have seen. We cannot pay him a higher compliment than that of saying, as we sincerely can say, that it forcibly reminds as of Wordworth's poetry.

As in the case of Jerningham, so in that of Doveton, we refrain from attempting any regular analysis of the story; our extracts are intended rather to illustrate the general character of the work.

The father of Gerard Doveton, a ruined merchant, compelled to retire into the country, where he thought to find, in his retreat from the great world, the peaceful enjoyment which rural scenery and moral occupation afford to those who have a taste for them; but he is disappointed, and the causes of that dis ppointment are thus eloquently described :

My father was no philosopher, unless it be philosophy to lie down at the approach of danger, like a poor Hindoo fanatic, awaiting the advent of the Juggernaut. It is wise indeed to bear, but not to bear over-much,-to be patient under affliction, but not to be greedy after wretchedness, to bend, but not to be broken,-to receive meekly the chastisements of Providence, but not-oh! believe me, not wise to take the scourge into our own hands and to lengthen out the measure of our sufferings.

My father, as I have before said, my father was unhappy; he sought for oblivion, but it came not at his bidding; he tried to foster the growth of some new-born passion in his breast, or rather, I should say, to generate an all-engrossing attachment to some particular pursuit. He knew that idleness was the nurse of sorrow, and he resolved not to be idle; but, unfortunately, nature had endowed him with no strong predilections, and he soon found that an exotic taste, like plucked flowers planted in a jar of earth, will die long before it can become a rooted feeling in the breast. My father, since the days of his boyhood, had dwelt in the great city;" vast piles of plasterwoven stone had been daily before his eyes, and now that he attempted to attune his soul to the enjoyment of external nature, he found that the attempt was a failure; he went. abroad, and he looked around him upon the thousand beauties of inanimate creation ; but he could not lose sight of humanity, nor escape out of himself, by elevating his soul into the clear sunshine of philosophic abstraction, high above the misty influences of this sorrow-reeking world. His spirit was clogged to earth; it was capable of no lofty flight; the green fields and the spreading trees, the all-surrounding heaven, the bloomy air-tints on the distant hills, the sinuous river rushing towards the sea, and, more than all, the beautiful alternations of light and shadow upon the dædal landscape awakened not his slumbering soul, nor dragged his fettered imagination from its dark prison-house of clay. He tried to soar-to be abstacted-to be drunk, as it were, with the surrounding loveliness, but he could not; it was beyond his power; his spirit crept along the earth.

Then he thought to confine the sphere of his effects, and he turned aside from the contemplation of universal nature, to commune with an individual link of the great chaim of creation. He sought for occupation in the garden; but there he found not the treasure he was searching after. His mind worked not with his limbs. He took the spade into his hand, and he brought together a multitude of plants, and he classified them, and he watched their growth; and he spake learnedly of stamina and corolla and monocotyledonous leaves; but his heart was not in his garden; botany had no charms for him, he saw the flower, but he beheld not its beauties; he marked the specific character of each plant, he investigated all its various properties; but his soul dwelt not admiringly upon the wonders of its organic structure and the strange history of its several developments from the seed to the perfect flower. He had dwelt too long in cities to find joy in a study, which has nature for the object of its investigations; old memories haunted him still; to follow up that, which he had begun, he soon found to be fruitless toil; so he threw aside Linnæus in disgust, and suffered his garden to be neglected.

The father of Gerard is not particularly happy in his family: his wife, the personification of conventionalism, is a mere woman of the world, and her two daughters are faithful imitations of her. Gerard, of course, is not the mother's favorite, and the father dares not show his love for him; thus is imagination persecuted by convention. One of the two brothers is a young, thoughtless boy, the other a military dandy-an empty headed and heartless coxcomb. The mother's conventional vanity receives, on one occasion, a tremendous shock from the blundering stupidity of a servant. The incident, which is sufficiently ludicrous, is well related; but we pass on to scenes of a higher order. Doveton, unhappy at home, seeks consolation elsewhere, and finds it in the family of the Moores. Here is a sketch of Michael Moore, the personification of the wisdom of nature untrammelled by art.

MICHAEL MOORE.

Michael Moore was unlike his brother in character as well as in person. He was more

his serene forehead, and the mild lustre of his hazel eye, there was that which indicated a contemplative, and sometimes a self-concentrated mind. He spake little, but his face communed with you. He would bend his eyes fondly on his sister, and take her hand into his own, and his lips would settle into an expression of fondness; and thus would he sit, not uttering a word, until the fulness of his heart overflowed, and his eyelids were heavy with tears; and then be would throw his arms around Ella's neck, and almost stifle her with kisses.

At other times, he would climb up the many-coloured hill, which rose at the back of the cottage. There he would make himself a couch of purple and yellow heath, and baring his forehead to the summer's breeze, he would gaze around him upon the distant landscape, the blue hills, the winding river, and the far-off sea blending with the horizon, and dotted with white sails; or he would lie supine, watching the clouds as they formed themselves into grotesque figures, whilst his fancy bodied forth strange resemblances, and he beheld cities and giants, in the summer's sky. Never did created being more intensely enjoy his existence. With him to be was to be happy; and Michael Moore's was a wide heritage, for the great universe was his portion. He was no dreamer; he did not live, poet-like, in an imaginary world, nor fill the cup of his happiness from any invisible source, but from a fountain, a never failing fountain, of actual and palpable delights. Were not the trees green? Were not the flowers beautiful and fragrant? Was not the air fresh, and the moss soft, and the turf elastic, and the sun warm? Did not the birds, sing to him, and the painted butterflies wanton around him, and the bees ply their tastes in his presence? Might he not lie on the warm grass, or bathe in the cool element, or run through the thin air, and no one dispute his right to such enjoyments? Happy boy! nature appealed not to bis pure young soul in vain; nor spurned he the rich gifts which were laid at his feet, because his brethren were suffered to partake of them.

Nor was this all; for Michael Moore was not content to His was an inquiring mind; it was not enough for him to look that it was very fair; he soon desired to know, and he began to trate, with a searching eye, the inner recesses of creation. Nor

read only the surface of things upon the face of nature, and see investigate causes, and to penedid he fail; for he was, indeed "One

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he had wisdom, not only beyond his condition, but, indeed, much beyond his years; for, though he had received no lessons from any other preceptor than his mother, he had learned very much from her, and retaining firmly the knowledge that he imbibed readily, his mind soon became the store-house of much precious and varied lore. He knew nothing of languages, it is true, unless it were the language of nature; but he could name the stars and the flowers of the field, and he knew every bird by its plumage, and could tell you the specific properties of the smallest insect that had ever excited his attention. And he had read, too, of other countries, and the history of his own land, and he had traced the courses of discoverers upon the map, and there was scarcely a place of which he knew not the situation. Mrs. Moore had not many books, but Michael had studied them all; and, if I err not, to the young student a few volumes are more profitable than vast libraries. It was good for him that he could not prematurely become, as some boys do, a helluo librorum; for there is much wisdom which is not in books, and Michael Moore, circumstance as he was, ran no risk of being seduced by the learning of human sciolists into the more than folly of closing his eyes to the wisdom of God, as unfolded in the pages of the creation. He read; but he regarded each volume as nothing more than an imperfect commentary upon the one universal book of Nature.

And thus he went on, from year to year, increasing in wisdom and in beauty. Time soiled not the purity of his young mind, for he imbibed no pernicious knowledge, and he mingled not with evil people. He thought, and he acted no sin; indeed be knew nothing of its existence, excepting that he had read of its denunciation in the pages of holy writ. He had seen no crime done in his presence, for he had never wandered many miles from his homestead, and then his course had always lain in the direction of the most secluded part of the country. The rude fingers of the world had not brushed off the first bloom of his innocence ; he had never hungered after things forbidden, nor drawn one single cup of pleasure from any impure fount. In the midst of beauty and love his young soul expanded flower-like; they were his aliment, and he was always full; he desired no more than he possessed; lovely and full of love himself, he was a portion of that great whole of beauty, which was the source to him of such infinite enjoyment.

Is not this, we ask, an eloquent and highly poetical sketch of an exalted specimen of humanity.

We shall not attempt to give the author's sketches of all his characters, but we cannot omit that of Ella Moore:

ELLA MOORE.

Equally pure, equally full of love, equally, nay, more beautiful was Ella. Like unto her brother, in the prevailing expression, and indeed in the lineaments of her face, there was more

of the seraph in her aspect; for her eyes were deep blue, as an Italian sky; and her figure so light and fragile, that when she glided from one place to another, you would scarce have thought that she was a material being. She was one year younger than Michael, but many years behind him in knowledge; for, although she was an apt scholar, and thoughtful withal, she had not the inquisitive mind of her brother, and she was more contended with the superficial, as woman indeed ought to be. Ella Moore was most truly maiden-like; she seemed to have an intuitive perception of all that it became girlhood to be; she never aspired beyond her proper sphere; nor suffered herself to descend below it. I have seen her when a transient ebullition of feeling has betrayed her into what she deemed an excess, shrink back as though she were frightened at her own boldness, and assume a more becoming serenity. And it was nature, not art, that restrained her: she had not been taught to school her emotions, and she knew nothing of conventional obligations; she was regulated in all that she did by an innate sense of the beautiful and becoming; and, if she had been raised from the cottage to the palace, she would have graced her elevated situation equally with her more lowly one.

Of the character of John Smith, the personification of the reasoning faculty, or judgment, the following extract of a letter written to Doveton, by him, after he had left school, will give a sufficient idea:

"The most amiable qualities of our nature require certain modifications. Even love, wherein you abound to such fullness, must be modified, or it will betray you into excesses not only dangerous but vicious. It is a mistake to think that what is amiable in itself must in its increase become still more amiable. Directly one good quality, by its enlargement, begins to clash against another, it has arrived at an excess which must be moderated; for one virtue administers to another, and when it ceases to do so, it changes its nature, and is no longer good. Agesilaus was once heard to exclaim, Oh! how hard it is both to love and to be wise.' Love warring against wisdom is not to be cherished, but to be cast out with contumely and disgrace. I question whether more evil does not result from the misdirections of the better qualities of our nature than from the onward progress of our baser ones, even as a treacherous friend is more dangerous than an open enemy.

"I should be almost ashamed of myself for writing down such palpable common-places, did I not feel assured that these very common-places will be much more useful, and, perhaps, more novel to you, than the most subline and original truths, which, were I capable of giving birth to them, I should refrain from declaring in your presence. You have too much of the original and the subline (?) already, and what you want is a little of the common-place. I think that I see you, as you read this last sentence; but do not look so contemptuous, I beseech you, nor utter your indignant Pshaws,' nor exclaim, Grovelling worm!'

For man is oft-times nobler when he creeps
Than when he sours;'

and this reminds me that I intended to tell you, that if you read any more poetry, read Wordsworth's, and if you can manage to do so, read it always in the open air, with a beautiful prospect before you, and, perhaps, you will learn, from this greatest of good men, how to possess yourself in lowliness of heart.

"I do not infer that you are proud; but you are too exclusive in your sympathies. I have heard you complain that none sympathize with you: how can you expect it when you sympathize with no one? You voluntarily separate yourself from the herd, and then complain of your solitary lot. Take it upon my philosophy, Doveton, that the world will not trouble itself to quarrel with you; so that if there should be any schism between you, be assured that you have quarrelled with the world. Come down then to the level of humanity; for he is the truly wise man who moves with the stream, and yet avoids its impurities; who is content with the world as he finds it, looking upon all things with a quiet eye, neither envying those above him, nor despising those beneath him, and readily sympathizing with all. Do not think that because you have set your thoughts upon lofty matters, and indulge in high aspirations, and talk about love, and glory, and knowledge, and such like abstractions, that all meaner things are contemptable, and that you lower yourself by ceasing to generalize; for such, believe me, is not the case.

"I have heard you talk about the delight of boyhood, and yet you refuse to share in the very sports which engender them. You talk about the beauties of the creation, and will not stoop to examine a flower; you talk about domestic happiness, and yet look with contempt upon the woman who sits by the fire side, employed upon the fabrication of a pin-cushion. You attach no specific ideas to the blessings of which you speak; how then can you expect to enjoy them? I am afraid that these dim abstractions of yours are productive of every little happiness. But let me assure you, Doveton, and I know not how I cau embody my assurances in better language than that of the poet whom I have before had occasion to cite, that

The dignity of life is not impaired

By aught that innocently satisfies

Is a still happier man, who, for those heights

Of speculation not unfit, descends ;

And such benign affections cultivates
Among the inferior kinds.'

Need I say more to convince you that there is no wisdom in thus always aspiring heaven-ward ?

"If you expect to possess yourself of happiness in the lump, I fear that you are doomed to endless disappointment. It is no easier to do this, believe me, than it is to carry off a house, or a bridge, or a cathedral bodily. Brick by brick we most accomplish the task; and a number of small pleasures, like a number of small stones, consummate the structure of our happiness.

"Do not, then, refuse to take what you can get, because you are not offered all that you want. I never knew any good arise from thus grasping at an imaginary whole, instead of contenting one-self with the reality of a part; there is little wisdom in this rejection of small gifts, this yearning after consummate felicity; especially as the lofty-headed traveller, who will not stoop to pick up the small blessings which lie scattered in his path, is not always the most impervious to the annoyance of the petty difficulties obstructing his way There is very little philosophy, I am sure, in refusing to derive happiness from the same source that supplies us with wretchedbess-from trifles; and, if I am not much mistaken, I know one who will stop to pick a poison herb, but not to cull a sweetly-smelling flower.

Gerard Doveton gives an account of his studies at school, and describes his mind to have been endowed with analytical power, that enabled him to separate the grain from the chaff with little labour and difficulty, and thus, though he was less industrious than his school-fellows, easily to out-strip them. Notwithstanding this power, however, and its attendant advantages, Doveton was not satisfied with the result of his studies.

"Yet, when I examined more closely the nature of my aspirations, I found that their ultimate object was not to be known, but to be loved. I looked upon fame, but as the minister of love.' If I desired to exalt myself above my fellows, it was mainly, that I might render myself more worthy to claim their sympathy and affection; it was with the hope that the admired of the many might be a fit object to be loved by the few. I little thought at that time, neither do I think so Dow, though I well know that it is a common belief, that there is no greater stumbling-block in the way of love, than fame; I was more charitable in my philosophy. I did not hold that to be great is to be envied; for I thought that love and admiration are stronger principles than envy.

We live by admiration, hope, and love;
And e'en as these are well and wisely fixed,
In dignity of being we ascend;"

and I did not think so meanly of my fellow-creatures, as to believe, that by the encouragement of qualities opposite to these, we submit to a state of endless degradation. For if we ascend by admiration, doubtless by envy we are debased."

His aspirations were not to be known, but to be loved, a beautiful and characteristic thought!

Doveton takes to a regular course of deep study, and advances far into the regions of "Science, Poetry and thought;" but in this, as in everything else, he shews himself the creature of impulse, rather than of reflection, and runs into excess.

"Month after month passed away, and I felt that I was daily acquiring strength. I had now become the denizen of a new world; but I know not whether it was a world of happiness or of misery; for, in looking back upon this period of my existence, I can distinguish but one feeling, - an allabsorbing desire after knowledge, actuating and wholly engrossing me. In the ardour of my pursuit, I forgot the end, and thought only of the means; or, rather, the ultimate was obscured by the immediate object of my travail; the means became the end. I lost sight of love and glory in the distance, and beheld only knowledge that was near at hand. Whether I was happy all this time, I do not know; -I never knew. It was all to me like the excitement of battle; I had no breathing moments to consider whether my feelings were pleasurable or otherwise. When I was not actually engaged in study, I was pondering over what I had last read. My brain was always at work; the thoughts of the closet pursued me into the fields: it was in vain that I went abroad for recreation: I could not unburthen my mind. I set my body in motion, I bared my forehead to the breeze, I looked around me at the circumjacent country,- but I could not rid myself of this heavy intellectual thraldom, I could not be fancy-free. Even outward objects, which I beheld palpably, took shape and colouring from the most prominent remembrances that my recent studies had stamped upon my mind. I roamed with Petarch in the meadows about Avignon; I was with Tasso in the dungeons of Ferrara; I set with Ben Jonson, and other choice spirits of "The Appollo," in the Old Devil

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Tavern, at Temple-Bar. Then, at other times, when the pages of the metaphysician had been the last over which I had bent, I would fancy myself with Socrates in his Athenian prison, whilst the old man, with a serene aspect, and in a calm voice, delivered that wondrous discourse which Plato has enshrined in his Phædo; or I would sit beside Epictetus, the stoic, in the palace of Marcus Antoninus; or with Seneca, philosophizing in the death-agony; or weep over the degradation of our Bacon, whose wisdom redeemed us from the ignorance of the dark ages in which he found us. It was to the study of the leading metaphysical writers of all nations, that I principally devoted myself. System after system did I explore, seeking wisdom in this multitude of counsel, but, not finding the jewel that I sought, I searched deeply, and with the most unwearying perseverance; but the further that I advanced into the inner places of science, the more hopeless was my uncertainty and bewilderment. I asked, with Pilate, What is truth?' and first one philosopher, and then another, unfolded his little scroll of intelligence before my eyes, and answered: "Thou wilt find it here: in my system is that which you seek." What could I do, thus distracted, but endeavour to judge wisely for myself? I endeavoured; and patiently dissecting the machinery of each system, I arrayed their several constituent parts one against the other; and with the utmost candour, and all the discrimination I possessed, did I then attempt to make mine election from amongst the multitude of antagonist arguments which I had laid out for examination before me. I failed; but never was there a failure productive of more lasting advantages. I could not make mine election; I found not what I sought; and the phoenomena of the human mind were greater mysteries to me now than ever. But though I had not unlocked the portals of truth, I had found that which I knew must be a key to them: I knew the causes of my failure, and they were these; that I had entered the regions of philosophy without comprehending the language of the philosophers; that there was in this country not one, but many languages; and that this plurality had not only been productive of endless difficulties to all travellers in their dominions, but had likewise been the im mediate origion of almost all their intestine disputes.

"Having arrived at this discovery, I recommenced my inquiries de novo, by endeavouring, after the fashion of the algebraist, to invent a sort of universal vocabulary, to which I might refer all the different terms of different metaphysicians; and thus reducing them to one common language proceed without any fear of discovering, after months of travail, that I had been following up words instead of ideas, and had made divers journeys, by different roads, all leading to the same final resting-place. How often does the downfall of an error form a pile, whereby we may ascend unto truth."

He neglects even the even knowledge may be indiscretion:

Moores for this intense study, forgetting that acquired at too dear a rate; and he suffers for his

"But this state of things could not endure very long; and before the autumnal winds had stripped the trees of their foliage, I became sensible of very strange sensations throughout my whole frame. There was a film over my eyes, a dullness in my brain, a feeling of extreme weakness in all my limbs. I found it difficult to read, and still more difficult to comprehend the little that was reflected upon my vision. There was a continued noise in my ears, as though a rapid stream had beea rushing impetuously through my head. All was dim, chaotic, confused. I scarcely knew who I was or where I was. I went about from one room to another, and ordered myself to the daily goings on of life, but all my movements were mechanical. I scarcely had any will to direct me. Others spoke to me, and I made answer, but I knew not what I was saying. I felt neither hunger nor thirst, but I presented myself at all the meals of the family, and ate, because I was accustomed to eat. I retired to my chamber at night, but if sleep be a forgetting, I am sure that I rarely slept. I passed many days in a sort of dim consciousness; a glimmering twilight of the intellect; and then at last the crisis arrived.

I had over-worked my young brain. One night, after I had retired to my sleeping apartment, all the sensations, which I have above endeavoured to describe, came upon me with increased violence. I thought that my dissolution was at hand, and that I was about to be benumb. ed into a state of torpor, which would prove the fore-runner of death. Perhaps I do not employ the right expressions; for I find it extremely difficult to describe my physical sensations. I felt an extreme oppression about every part of my body, and more especially about the regions of my brain. A dull, heavy, binding pain seemed to grasp me. Such was the weight of the super-incumbent atmosphere, tl at I felt as though mountains were being piled upon me, as they were upon the vanquished Titans. I opened my chamber window, and I looked around me, but I saw nothing but a pale sheet of silver. The full orbed moon was shining brightly in an almost unclouded sky, and I was sensible of the light, but of nothing else; no shape, no shadow was distinguishable. I endeavoured to collect myself, but in vain. I walked up and down the room once or twice, thinking that, perhaps, motion might relieve me, but something heavy seemed clinging around me, and my limbs were exceedingly weak. I shook myself, but to no purpose for I could not set myself free. Then I sat down upon the ground, and I bathed my temples with water, and went again to the open window, that the night-air might blow upon my forehead; but I felt no coolness therefrom. Then I threw myself down on the bare floor, and pressed my hands tightly against both sides of my head, for the noise which I now heard was like the roaring of a mighty cataract, and all was darkness, both within and without. I had no other sensations but that of a continuous flowing through the the cavities of my brain, and of a binding feeling about my brow, as though it were girt about with a circlet of iron; and then, suddenly, all was still, and I seemed to fall into a complete insensibility.

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