money. Another received, with his salary, an annual allowance of ruby wine fresh from the royal cellars; and a third, though he never wore a crown of bay leaves, was chosen, like Skelton, from among the poeta laureati of the "Unyversite of Oxenforde," and called in plain English" laureat poete." Such was the phrase applied by Edward IV. to John Kaye, and by Chaucer to his great contemporary Petrarch, whose crowning in the Capitol at Rome was the talk of all Europe. Princes, nobles, and senators, in the pomp and splendour of mediæval costume, had marched before him; patrician youths arrayed in green and scarlet flung garlands of fragrant flowers on his path; the chief magistrate, one of the Colonna family, seated on a throne with the laurel crown in his hand, listened to the poet's disbrows the unfading diadem, of which the course on Virgil, and then placed on his very name reminded the wearer of that Laura who had been his inspiration and his theme. To present to the senator a sonnet in praise of Rome, to move in gorgeous procession to the Vatican, and pay homage to its august occupant, and to suspend the laurel wreath before the shrine of St. Peter, was the natural conclusion of this novel and ca nus super te. O pende pluralem, et id "non | like Chaucer at Woodstock, was lodged in possumus quod est semper currens in meo a goodly mansion assigned him by the capite! Cupio expandere me ipsum in singu- Court, with a comfortable little pension of larli. Mi carissime fili, tu es Catholicissimus twenty marks, equalling £240 a year of our et Christianissimus Imperator ut unquam fuit. Quum appellavi te Judam Iscariotam, meus stomachus fuit ex ordine, et habes nullam notionem quantum ego suffero quum id est casus. Cape nullam notitiam. Et infacto, Judas fuit tristis pro facinore quod commiserat, et pependit se; dum tu, mi digne fili, non es, quod ego unquam audivi, in minimo gradu tristis, nec, usque ad hoc tempus, pependisti te. Ergo analogia non it super omnes quatuor, et foret absurda. Simili modo, nunquam, non nunquam vocabo te Pontium Pilatum, nam Pilatus erravit per ignorantiam, sed tu es in omnibus rebus excellenter bene informatus, flos altissimæ sapientiæ. Habeo bonam mentem dicere tibi secretum habeo parvam ideam in meo capite. Sed ne repete eam. Vellem aliquo die vel aliè facere te Sanctum. Sed redire ad nostros oves. Volo interea precari te linquere tuos milites paullum ampliùs in hâc urbe. Sunt tam amabiles! Et, ut potes bene supponere, idea dandi sursum meam mollem Apostolicam sellam hic, ad meum tempus vitæ, est confusè displicens. Dicam tibi quid; sub hane parvam conditionem, quanquam odi peregrinans, et expecto esse terribiliter æger, ibo ad Massiliam coronare te. Illic! Non possumus - confunde id, volo dicere non possum dicere pulchrius quam illud. Da et cape. Vive et permitte vivere. Habeo nullas novitates, exceptis quibusdam particularibus tumultûs fidelium in Barlettâ, qui ut exemplar fidei naturaliter calefecit meum paternum vetus cor, et spero titillabit tuum in quodam gradu. Traxerunt deorsum ministrorum domos sicut hilaritas, et flagellaverunt unum aut duo hæreticos; vix satis quidem. Et nunc, vetus sodalis, ad Deum. Plus potestatis tuo cubito. Sperans replicationem ad tuam matutinissimam convenientiam, Maneo semper Tuus affectionatus vetus Pater, Amor mea carissima filiæ Imperatrici. Si unquam fuit Sancta in crinolinâ, illa est. Ex aminer. From The London Review. In looking down the list of Poets Laureate, from Chaucer to Tennyson, one is at a loss to conceive on what principle of selection they were raised to their office. It is true that some of the earlier amongst them were not known by that precise epithet, but they all held a post as king's versifiers, and received marks of the royal favour. One, striking pageant. Two hundred and fifty years later, it would have been repeated in honour of Tasso; but just as he had learned from Clement VIII. that this high distinction was in store for him, he departed hence to receive at other hands a better and brighter crown. Rome, in those ages, knew which of her sons was worthy of the laurel; and this is precisely what England does not seem to have known till of late. During four centuries it appears to have been purely accidental whether the nation's poet should be a bright genius or a venal scribbler. Chaucer, the soldier, the ambassador, the romancer, the father of English poetry, was, succeeded by Scogan, Kaye, and Barnard, whose names are now almost forgotten. John Skelton, the "royal orator," was better known for his learning than his fancy, and, though a priest, he satirized Wolsey and other over-fed churchmen of his time. Edmund Spenser (informally indeed, but in a way that seems to have been recognised) took his place, richer with his "verses dipped in dew of Castalie" his "Shepherd's Calendar" and "Faery Queene" than with his 3,000 acres out of the forfeited estate of the Earl of Desmond. I those jackals that hunt with the lions of litLord Chatham's sister used often to say of erature. The poet's crown next fell to that "Faery Queene" that it was the only Nicholas Rowe. His tragedies are tolerthing her illustrious brother knew accurate- able, if any can be called so which are ly. If the lofty and cultivated Daniel had mere imitations of a classic and unnatural not been made Laureate when Shakespeare style. As to Eusden, another Laureate in was in the zenith of his fame, he would the time of George I., and in the time, be have formed no unworthy link between it remarked, of Alexander Pope, his name Spenser and "rare Ben Jonson." Jonson's is now scarcely known. He bequeathed career as Laureate began in the year his laurels to Colly Cibber, whose chief Shakespeare died; and it must be granted qualifications for the task of poet consisted that "Catiline's Conspiracy" and Drink in his writing prose comedies, managing a to me only with thine Eyes" would alone theatre well, and publishing an amusing acsuffice to vindicate their author's claim to count of his own life, with all its bustle the post he held. But what shall we say and frivolity, stage-anecdotes, and graphic of his successor? Did not Sir William sketches of actors and actresses. Davenant write tragedies that make one laugh and comedies that make one cry? Did he not pen his frivolous masks while Milton composed "Comus," or dictated that immortal epic which, with much difficulty, as Elijah Fenton says, he succeeded in having licensed for the press, and could sell the copy for no more than fifteen pounds? Sir William Davenant fought bravely in the royal cause, and returned from exile at the Restoration to reap his reward, while Milton died before he had received the whole of the paltry price stipulated for " Paradise Lost." "Glorious John came next. But Dry den is not such a favourite with us as with 99 Halcro in the "Pirate." We have no sympathy with one who celebrated the praises of Cromwell, Charles II., and James II., by turns, with equal fervour. Of his genius there can be no doubt, and of his obscenity none either. It was far less disgraceful to him to be beaten by the hired ruffians of Lord Rochester, when returning from his coffee-house in Covent-garden, than to be dismissed from his office of Poet Laureate by William of Orange. He would, no doubt, have written birthday odes in his honour as readily as for either of his predecessors, and would certainly have produced much better ones than any Laureate who succeeded him during a hundred and twenty years. But his venality deserved retribution, and found it. His £300 a year tooks wings and fled, and Shadwell, the butt of his satire, the hero of "Mac Flecknoe," and the Og of " Absalom and Achitophel," wore the wreath of laurel that had been torn from his brows. Shadwell, Dryden's enemy, was soon succeeded by Nahum Tate, Dryden's friend. But friend and foe were alike unworthy to stand in his place. Tate had written parts of "Absalom and Achitophel," which were evidently inferior to the rest, though revised by the masterhand; and he has been well called one of "Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or He sleeps among the dull of ancient days. fool and a poet, but Cibber conveniently The honour of the Laureateship was fast likely to retrieve it. Pity that he had not a declining, and William Whitehead was not place in the " Dunciad," where, by the side of Shadwell, he might have "nodded the just broke the fall of the Laureates, and poppy on his brows!" Thomas Warton enriched our literature with a valuable "History of English Poetry;" but the line reached its lowest degradation in Henry J. Pye. He was Laureate while, in the language of Byron, the last hopes of deserted poetry slept with pious Cowper, and of Cowper's sad but poetic life at Olney, not then only, but during the last ten years Till 1813, he disgraced our century; and the meanest rhymer in a poet's corner could ask with justice at Warley Common and at Barham Downs by the adjutants at the head of five different regiments, each in its camp. Great results were expected, but, before the reading was half over, the front ranks and all the men within verse-shot dropped their arms, and were found fast asleep. Thus Spartan Pye lulled England to repose, and, not content with translating Tyrtæus, he also rendered into his mother tongue a German tale, which was a sort of "Blue Beard" full of diablerie Tudesque, and induced Lady Diana Beauclerc to illustrate the silly words of a silly subject with her elegant pencil. "The pie began to open; the birds began to sing," has been reversed in the case of this maudlin minstrel. When Henry J. Pye had closed his lips for ever, a better race of Laureates succeeded. Southey sang well, Wordsworth better, Tennyson best of all. They have disdained to offer to royalty periodical and fulsome birthday odes. They have addressed the reigning prince when and how they pleased, and not the Sovereign only, but any member of the royal family who seemed to call for a welcome, an epithalamium, or an epitaph. One imperishable "book of song was dedicated in the sweetest verse to Victoria-the revered, the beloved-sixteen years ago, when the throstle called through wild March, and "the sun-lit almond blossom" was shaking all about her palace walls at Osborne. The "Idylls of the King" (in a subsequent edition to the first) were inscribed to "the silent father of our kings to be," and the "Welcome to Alexandra met the daughter of a long line of Danish princes ere she touched our shores. England has now but two great poets, and the Laureate is one of them. His fame is ever increasing, for he combines the precision of the correct school of Queen Anne with much of the fire and freedom of the Elizabethan poets. We shall have no more Eusdens and Cibbers; the Laureates henceforth will be chosen because Nature's own hand has moulded them for the office; and when Tennyson shall resign his green and stainless wreath, it will, we may be pretty sure, be worn by one more resembling Chaucer and Spenser than either Whitehead or Pye. From The Examiner. Two Months on the Tobique, New Brunswick. An Emigrant's Journal, 1851. Smith, Elder, and Co. PRIVATE diaries of travel are not often very interesting, and their value is likely to be very slight indeed if they do not see the light for fifteen years, and if in the interval the districts they describe have often been traversed by others and, by the advance of civilization, have ceased to be strange and dangerous localities. Yet this little book is well worth reading. It tells the adventures of a young emigrant who, after spending seven years in the Australian bush, went in 1851 to explore the wildest part of New Brunswick, then little known or thought of as a place of settlement. He died a few years after, and now his friends publish selections from the letters and diaries penned only for their private reading, rightly seeing in them a story of patient endurance and of energetic battling with difficulties that many must be the better for reading. The traveller reached New Brunswick in September, 1851. On the 25th of the month he reached the mouth of the Tobique. He worked his way along its course for three weeks in a small canoe, with a single attendant, then established himself in a wigwam for two months, and in the middle of December, when the Tobique had become quite frozen over, used it as a road for getting back to the civilized, or rather to the white man's world again. The red men he found almost as civilized as the European settlers. This is the description of one of his halting-places: Michelle's hut is neatly built and painted, and consists of a room about fourteen feet square, with the usual stove in the middle, where the family live, and another smaller room which is given to me, neatly floored and the windows consists of a chair and a table with a few trunks furnished with glazed sashes. The furniture and boxes; I have spread my blankets in the corner on the boards. Round the walls are hung some of the gowns and shawls of the squaw (I was going to say lady) of the house, whom I hear conversing quietly with her husband in the next room, in their own soft-sounding language, especially soft when spoken in the gentle tones of the squaws. Indeed it must capabilities which sounds not sweet and soft be a language strangely deficient in melodious from a woman's lips when she speaks quietly. The village consists of two rows of houses, about twenty in number; between them is the village green where, in fine weather, before their doors family-parties are cooking their meals at bright fires. There is a chapel and burialground in which the graves are simply marked with a cross, and there is also some little land fenced in, and in a measure cultivated; but the Indians have no great genius for agriculture. This village is perched on a high bank in the angle formed by the junction of the Tobique This is the hut that the traveller built for himself, with the assistance of two men, who went up for a few days for the purpose, by the side of the river, and on the edge of a vast, desolate forest: with the St. John, commanding a very pretty | It is a wild, almost dreamlike sort of existence. view down the river and of the high hills be- Shut out from the human race, I know nothing yond. It has altogether surprised me, as I had of what passes wars and convulsions of no idea of the extent to which the Indians are society, desolation, and pestilence may be abroad, actually civilized, being in many instances good on the face of the earth, and not a whisper tradesmen, with a correct (in fact a very keen) would reach me here. But if the body here be appreciation of the value of money, talking active, neither is the mind idle. The philosoEnglish well and fluently, and having hardly pher who exists but in meditation on abstract more, if so much of the savage as the peasantry truths should retire into the depths of an Amin some of the remoter parts of England, and erican forest, where the very wilderness around still more Ireland, among the mountains of him would teach him truths he knew not of, which may be found perhaps as complete savages would murmur mighty secrets in his ear. To as any in the world." these truths, these secrets whispered in the inexpressible voice which seems to belong to the ancient forest, as do its restless heaving, its unceasing roar to the ocean have I been listening in my seclusion till I almost look on the different character to each. The sturdy maple, trees as living, sentient beings, attributing a with his crooked limbs, standing, as it were, with his arms akimbo, defying the storm; the huge, A building ten feet square; the walls formed gloomy hemlock, rearing himself towards in the first place of three big logs laid on each Heaven like a vast tower, and seeming to shed other; against these are placed upright split a gloom over the forest beneath from his dark, cedar planks, three on one side, straight up on stern face; the tall and graceful spruce, pointthe other slanting inwards against the roof, caring to the skies, with upraised finger, like a ried from the upright side to the upper log on the opposite side. The chimney consists of an opening between the roof and the upright side beneath this opening and against the logs themselves the fire is lighted. Why the place is not forthwith burnt down is a problem I cannot yet solve, and probably never shall, as the most experienced can only answer that "they don't know, only it never does." As for the door, it is a little hole left in the side-a blanket hung over it outside keeps the wind out more effectually than would a door of solid materials. Opposite the fire a spar divides off the "bedroom," which consists of a layer of spruce boughs in the corner; on these are spread my blankets; in the other stand three barrels, containing my supplies of pork, biscuits, flour, tea, sugar, and sundries. Stuck round the walls are knives, bags, articles of clothing, &c.; buckets, pots, and pans complete the furniture. The inhabitant of this little den is clothed in a red flannel shirt and coarse - homespun trowers, mocassins on his feet, a broad belt round his waist, in which is stuck a large sheath knife and a pouch for bullets, &c. Very interesting is the traveller's account of his solitary life. At the end of four weeks he tired of it, but found himself snow-bound. The river was not yet frozen over, but the winter had made the ground impassable. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, pass and leave me in my forest home, a prisoner in solitude unbroken. If my health fails, none to help me; if mys pirits sink, none to cheer me; if I wander away into the wilderness and die, none will ever know my fate. Dependent only on my own resources and on God, I yet can pass away my time thus cheerfully. prophetess; the malignant, ungainly cedar, flinging itself about in all sorts of uncouth attitudes, like an idle school-boy, an unmitigated nuisance, a bore-all are my acquaintances, my companions, my antagonists, my servants, and my teachers. The book is the well-written journal of two months of real Robinson Crusoedom. From The Spectator. COUNT VON BISMARK'S LAST MOVE. It is impossible to resist the conviction that Count von Bismark means war-war on a great scale and for a mighty stake. He has suddenly carried his quarrel with Austria out of the bounds of Holstein, and demanded for his master, almost in so many words, the sovereignty of North Germany. It has been reported for some days that the King of Prussia, in accepting the necessity of war, declared it should be waged for more than Holstein, and Count von Bismark has now announced that resolve to the German people. Austria had already demanded that the Diet should decide on the propriety of Prussian armaments, when the Premier on the 9th inst. unexpectedly gave a new turn to the game. On that day the Prussian representative at Frankfort formally demanded that the Diet should at once consider a proposition to convoke a German Parliament elected by universal suf frage, and then transfer to the new body its | Prussia considers Austrian armaments as own powers. The proposal fell like a bomb- levied against herself. shell in every German capital. For an instant it was regarded as an appeal to the Revolution, but a moment's thought dispelled this idea, and explained the motive of the new strategy. It was intended only to paralyze the minor Powers of Germany, and extend the area of the already accepted conflict. Count von Bismark wants no absolute Parliament elected by universal suffrage, for though it might, and if we may judge by the analogy of 1848 it probably would, enthrone a Hohenzollern, it certainly would also limit his constitutional power. But he ran no risk whatever, and knew that he ran none. The members of the Diet at Frankfort are not elected by the States they represent, but nominated by their Princes, cannot depart from their instructions, and do not proceed by debate. The Diet is in fact a congress, in the dpilomatic and not in the American sense. The Princes of course have no wish to be swept into nothingness by a revolutionary wave, and their representatives therefore are hostile to the proposition, only the two Dukes of Mecklenburg supporting the Prussian idea. Those two probably like it as little as their brethren, but the steady policy of their House has been to ensure their own absolute power, and with it their immense Crown lands, by acting on all occasions as feudatories of Berlin. The vote, though adverse, was received by the Premier without dissatisfaction, for his object had been attained. He had announced to Austria that she must fight or surrender all hope of German influence, and to the people of Germany that his object was not only Holstein, but unity. That announcement paralyzes the Princes. They cannot fight without their subjects' consent, and their subjects look to a union of North Germany as Americans look to the ultimate ownership of the continent on which they reside. They will not fight against it, or consent that their Princes should fight, and Austria, while forced into war, is stripped at a blow of her natural allies. The Kaiser is compelled to choose between an avowed retreat from Germany or war, and there can scarcely remain a doubt as to the choice he will make. Indeed it is already made in the demand that Prussia should demobilize her army, a demand which was either a folly unworthy of statesmanship, or a serious menace, and which has already been met by Prussia with a formal refusal, followed up by the statement, which always precedes a great Continental war, that After that the preservation of peace is a mere possibility, and Prussia enters the war with two most important advantages-the sympathy of North Germans, and the right, if she wins, to insist on the "reform of the Federation." The King in fact plays his game not for a ducal coronet, but an Imperial Crown, and plays it without the chance of resistance from those who are to become his subjects. The hope of an ultimate union is so dear to most German hearts, that even the Prussian Liberals are constrained to respect the politician who dares strike hard for the prize, and if the Prussian Chamber assembled to-morrow it would, if the journals may be trusted, vote first that Bismark should be dismissed, and next that his policy should be carried on. The next step will be to pardon him for the sake of his policy, and we may yet see the Prussian Chamber eagerly voting support to the man who, while suspending the national Constitution, promises to enlarge the national bounds. And indeed it is hard even for Englishmen not to acknowledge that they have been unjust to Count von Bismark. The man's policy is detestable, but his objects are great, his plans adequate, and his ability marvellous. A mere quireen, trained only to second-rate diplomacy, he has raised himself to the absolute sway of a kingdom, which no sooner obeys him than he begins to turn it into an empire. If he succeeds he will have fulfilled the most cherished desire of his country, accomplished for Germany all, save freedom, which Cavour secured for the Italian people. Doubtless he is a lower man than the great Italian who knew so well the power latent in free institutions, and who dying refused to govern with a state of siege; but he has much larger means, and he uses them with at least equal daring. The man who in his position can at once govern Prussia, keep down the Liberals, compel Liberals to admire him, defy the Austrian army, outwit the Austrian diplomatists, and either face or conciliate the Emperor Napoleon, must be, whatever his faults or his demerits, a man of statesmanlike brain. He may lose his game even now, for he has made a mistake in alienating the Liberals, and Austria can by surrendering Venetia break almost loose from the toils, but so far he has played it with a skill almost worthy the magnificence of the stake. If there were the slightest ground to believe that the work once accomplished he would restore the liberties of Prussia, the |