The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-16 00:00:00

spasmodic versifieation. Under the influence of
their jangling numbers crowding in up, ,n us, as they
sometimes did simultaneously, we have experi-
enced sensations akin to those produced upon
one's sense of hearing by hearkening to two
or three cracked and broken winded barrel
organs grinding away at different tunes toge-
ther under our windows in a Quiet Street.
Fancy the united melodies of " Pop Goes the
Weasle !" "Ah ! Susannah I" and the " Girl I
left behind me !" with a sort of under-tone or
diapason accompaniment of the "Old Hundredth, '
mingled with exporaneous fantasias on the drum
and pan'spipes—and you may have 801110 notion of
the bewitching effects produced by this mingled
outpouring of warlike strains, pitched in every
imaginable key, and carolled in all kinds of time,
roared most of them like any sucking dove—with
looks of brass and lungs of leather. Remember
Elogarth's famous picture of "The Enraged Musi-
cian"—frantically grinning despair frim his lattice
with a finger in each ear, and his features in a
blaze of indignation. Recollect Leech's hardly
less humorous sketch, in his "Pictures of Life
and Character"—representing at the top of one
page a fellow in the garret blowing himself into a
state of exhaustion on the cornet-a-piston, and an
Unfortunate wight of a man-of-letters in a room
below, maddened by the uproar, his slippered feet
paroxysmed from the carpet as he sits infuriatedly
at his writing-table, shreds of his hair still floating
in the atmosphere about him like a halo, one hand
grasped in anguish over his eyes, the other jobbing
a whole sheef of quills (nibs downwards) oa his
desk. Call to mind every conceivable image of
desperation resulting from noise and discord pro-
duced in the outraged name of the goddess-muse
Euterpe, and some faint conjecture may then he
formed of the slowly-prolonged agony with which
we have been fated to lissen of late to the " most
sweet voices" of the would-be war-poets--chant-
ing the glories of grapeshot and gunpowder in ac-
cents that might reasonably be mistaken for the
veriest catterwauling on the tiles. Some of the
Manchester cotton with which Mr. Bright would
seem to have deafened himself against all the mere
persuasive dictates of patriotism would not actually
come altogether amiss in thst din of this mock-
heroic hubbub of penny trumpets. Feeling thus
acutely under the infliction, we are compelled per-
force, in very gratitude, to commend whomsoever
we may discern among the mob of ballad sing,n's
about us, possessing a voice in any way less dis-
sonant than the harsh and guttural voices of his
compeers. It is thus with a sentiment of thank-
fulness that we hail the appearance of Mr. Story.
Listening to him, we feel that there are still left
notes of gentle and heroic vibration in that bat-
tered war trumpet which has latterly, when at the
lips of the majority of aspiring lyrists, omitted
nothing better than a gurgling blast resembling
the hee-haw of honest long-ears yonder cropping
his thistle by the wayside. The introductory ode
in the pres,!nt collection is addressed by our author
" To Alfred Tennyson, Esq., Poet Laureate"—not
with the versified scurrility of the scribe of " The
Transcendentalists," but rather in the language of
respectful, but earnest expostulation. Mr. Story
bids the Laureate—
deal no more in fiction ;
Trick no hero of the brain ;
Measured verse, and gorgeous diction,
Spent on Myths, are spent in vain.
Look around. Behold the Real
Far transcend the loved Ideal.
Adding—

Take a Boy, by birth connected
With Imperial pomp and state,
And describe him thence dejected
By a thun,jerbolt of fate,
Which—into his young house driven—
Strews it to each point of heaven !
Sing the youthful Outcast wandering
Over lands that hold but foes;
Yet where'er he wanders, ponderirg
To his ills a glorious close ;
One sad Spirit hovering o'er him,
And a hero's path before him !
Following the fortunes of his hero, he says—
Sing him to a prison taken,
And when Fear his life would c'aim,•
Lo ! his Captor—awed and shaken
By the spell-word of his name—
Spares it,—the damnation dreading
Which would follow his bloodshedding!
After stanzas, implying the celebration of the 1848
Revolution and the 1852 Coup d'Etat—the heroic
I act of Many iu February and of One in December
—the lyrist bids the Laureate sing of hits hero :
Sing him Power Imperial wielding,
Not as one to empire born ;
But the Toiling Millions shielding,
Whom a 4,g-by-birth might scorn.
Pamper, kings! the favoured classes—
He is Monarch of the Masses !
Sing him—heir to war and glory— •
' -Slighting glory gained by war ;
Coveting, for iaure's gory,
Bloodies palm• wreaths—fairer far ;
Marshalling—a Moral Movement ;
Heading armies of Improvement !
Sing him thus triumphant—wanting
But one pelf to fix his sway ;
And his wondrous Fortune granting
That, too, in her wondrous way—
War which waked in distant regions,
Gratifies his martial legions ;
War—to rescue frau oppression
Weak states, overborne by strong ;
War—to check unjust aggression,
Help the Rielt, and crush the Wrong ;
War—to spiel men's blood like water,
Waged for Ends that hallow Slaughter I
Sing him in that war a Leader,
Pr inipt, for those high Ena,, to strike ;
Then, concluding, bid thy r,a,ler
Snow, in tale, or song, his Like !
Proudly for thy Hero claim hiw,
And the Tiiird Napoleon name him !
Among the "Songs of the. War" which follow this
earnest but simple Ode upon "The Third Napo-
leon," we would select--as about the happiest—the
following :

NAPOLEON RULES AGAIN.
The baffled but still glorious Chief
Was sent to exile sad and for,
And his brave legions, filed with grie., •
Laid down their aims, and turned from war.
They sat by many a cottage light,
And there, when hours of toil were o'er,
In earne4 t ne they, night by night,
Told tales of their Great Emperor.
They told how first his fame arose,
How soon the chief of men was he,
And how he pv-seil the Alpine snows,
And how he marched through Paly.
They told how vanquished Austria sued,
How Prussia's king his vassal grew,
And how the Northern Czar, subluei,
Became his humble suppliant too.
They told how, when he held his court,
With all the pomp that Empire brings,
Thither did Europe's Queens resort,
And Europe's far-descended Kings.
They told how virtual sway he bore
From Moscow to the shores of Spain,
And how a prouder crown he wore
Than pressed the brows of Charlemagne!
All this was drank with greedy ear—
E'en boys, their grandsires' knees before,
Stood open-mouthed, and pressed to hear
Those tales of the Great Emperor.
They told how, to chastise the Czar,
In his own land he sought the foe,
And how the conquerors in the war
Were conquered by the frost and snow.
They t thl how then the Kings-by right
From that disaster courage drew,
And how at last their banded might
The Hero crushed on Waterloo.
They told how, in a distant isle,
Th' illustrious Chief was Captive now,
And here an angry flush, a while,
Would tinge the speaker's downcast brow ;
And then would come a sigh—a pan"—
A. deep emphatic whisper then : "
France ne'er will be the France,
r she
was,
Until Napoleon rules again Id '
This, too, was drank with g ee
y
a hbeefre,
aor
ear—
E'en boys, their grandsits:ske knees e
tees
Stood open-mouthed, Pe
Those tales of the nd
GREAT
li EMPEROR.
bold,
Those boys grew up to !tripg,
And those bold striplings up to meu,
Who cherished,elike their fathers old,
Dreams
Empire, back again.
They
felt--od the
rdeem enslaved,
enslav d
They scorned the Bourbon's idle state,
And nought but foreign bayonets saved
The throne of that Legitimate.
Another and another came
Fair Frances regal seat to fill ;
But still,. she sighed for one loved Name,
The symbol of a mightier will!
At length, and with no dubious voice,
That loved Names 'HEIR she called' to away ;
And well he justifies her choice
Who comes as England's Guest to•day.
We greet him with the heart's applause,
We echo back his people's strain ;
" France is again the France she was,
For—her Napoleon rules again !"
The commemoration of "Alma" is not to be men-
tioned with that only one among the " War
Waits" of Gerald Massey, in which the self-tauel
"poet and tailor" sang, in a spirit worthy of him-
self, how—

" England's chosen ones went up
Red Alma's hill to glory !"
Again, the celebration of the cavalry charge at
Balaklava by Mr. Story, dwindles into insignifi-
cance by the side of Mr. Tennyson's—although the
merits of the poem written by the Laureate upon
that sublime theme appear, in our judgment, to
have been greatly exaggerated by the more infa-
tuated among his many admirers. As to Mr.
Stalo "Battle et the Deltioin, the um owe