The Sun.
London, England, 1847-07-23 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

v°? CES FROM THE MOUNTAIA'S.
pre By Charles Mackay, LL.D.
ttman, ,nitz used to say, Man muss Gcbirge haben
1440, must have mountains !" So thinks Dr. Charles'
411)ev 41. T, and loving the mountains of his native land
fro"l 111 others, he gives voices to them and carols
rhythtr e hilltops the truths of this progressive age
his
in
little ` of singular beauty. The purpose of •
olurne is explained with much elegance in the
y C gue," where Aiistor, a young Templar, Karl, a
dee Rhymer, P.M Patrick, a young Sculptor,
jeeCt RS to the course to be pursued in their pro-
eXC
see UrSiCril to the mountains. After an argu-
vers thro
ug'A which beams the light of descriptive
poet 3'..levis is selected as their destination. The
thyn ' tne. fervour of his admiration calls upon the
flow, le' to heather the birch, the pine, the larch, the
1•
.4
'earth".jeWelS fair," and the torrents that
OfPing, amid the wild, a son
to '3lll'llent gladness, whenerness their floods are strong"-
41/1
,t
best tb e wild luxuriance of the scene
.
...44,1t ,' leo; thened spreads (with many a strath between,
, enoterland purple, haunt of birds and bees)
D lands the fern-clad feet and shaggy knees
••pfsnlig 13,.y Nevis, monarch of the hills,
sne'le pa remount of mountains, gemmed with rills,
Sc robed ; his Titan-shoulders nude,
Ating his hews in royal solitude
vov.r all. peers, and lookieg grimly down
Britain from his misty crown."
" Viet siteh. altitudes as these, therefore, are the
Igent3,,--°"; lato:surned to reverberate, and they are
5-
aby vol„ elm, such as would penetrate beyond wider
cr 61 an separate the mountain from the crowd.
•eareta‘el cay always speaks earnestly, and he is
nes% "f• SI wi
th the heart's earnestness. The happo
able ~;"„) man seems to him to be in a measure attaul-
Peiple;' the acceptance of certain universal prin-
biet-}; eri B,l' 3
el as the principles of general amity and
se9nentlto-operation. That happiness he
reach
th
Sr endeavours to bring more within the
Suet; • dlea•-beings by promulgating those principles.
IF; • k Visible in the verses entitled " We are Wiser
4.1.10111,
sl;:e Let us alone" " The little
Bze • •Sze. " The Man in the Dead Sea" is the
Om:" er•wild phantasies, but it has the golden ring
PaseitZ.,... -It is penned in a strain of the most intense
of itnpo;•ehnei words burn with. dmeantihnga; the agonies
rage are
ter* htt threaincident ids7viieldte wild—preternaturally wild.
"Poeimen of the vivid and picturesque
" Isha Ing • of the versification we transcribe these
to flo nf, fis of St. Sepulchre ;" the lines are supposed
to
im.urn the mouth of a wretch in the condemned
stickl°efee ewgP.te. Listen to these rhymes you
- it radiscriminate capital punishment !
y
tut•• 3re'a may think that I am crazed,
These4'llo t I saw, that did I see.
And walls are thick, my brain was sick,
The •!. et mine eyes saw lucidly.
I e •Oels the joists and through the stones
.4, suld look as through a glass;
I Id frem this dungeon, damp and cold,
watched the motley people pass.
All day long, raid an strong,
Rolled to and frop the living stream;
put in the night, I saw a sight-
-I cannot think it was a dream.
4'old St. Sepulchre's bell will toll
VAt e.ieht to-morrow, for my soul;
rllet thousands, not much better than I,
throng around to see me die;
..4,1'(1 teeny will bless their happy fate,
That they ne'er fell from their high estate,
I,:tAt did such deed as I have done;
ii,?tigh• from the rise to the set of sun,
• •LivY cheat their neighbours all their days,
And gather gold • •
11% trong, and my
But tiv soul fe I in
sliraY
Ways.
-As may death-hour near,
rtntle nits presenrceaTiPwr sight grows clear,
tell
ar• very truth, as it befel,
The snow lies o on the house tops cold,
and keenathwe March winds blow;
The rank grass theof
.churchyard mould
00vered o'er •
Tke r with
,drifted snow•, to2cl
.St.. Sepulchre's yard
eregvielge
And the shar Istolent, when I looked forth,
:Rocked by Pe eear stars seemed to dance in the sky,
in fierce winds of the north.
The houses dull seemed numb with frost,
the .streets seemed wider than of yore.
And the stnsgglin
g passengers trod, like ghosts,
orpn the pathway frore,
I look 'd through that churchyard rail,
thought of the And saw
bell that should ring my doom,
Sitting to
w
thr
ether o ee women, sad and pale,
gn a tomb.
e . fearful sight it was to see,
sfatilltms they rose and looked at me:
Cuk were their cheeks and eyes,
-tillue-cold were their feet, and bare;
,-I.enan and yellow were their hands,
It_g and scanty was their hair;
s•e.dt.round their necks I saw the ropes
• t.ly knotted, tightly drawn;
-,toncl knew they were not things of earth,
Ur creatures that could face the dawn.
ft (,
een
TI? dimly in th' uncertain light,
AueY multiplied upon my sight;
61-1111 d things like men and women sprung—
.,rom aPcs of those who had been hung—
the rank and clammy ground.
leeunted them —I knew them all,
esaeh with its rope around its neck,
'llarshalled by the churchyard wall.
t The stiff policeman, passing along,
• Actly them not, nor made delay;
-Looked
reeling bacchanal, shouting a song,
LaugA
trod at the clock, and went his way;
°.P of
e girls, with painted cheeks,
eauing and yelling in drunken glee,
iA
48sed liked a gust, and never looked
st the sight so palpable to me.
Must them—heard them—felt their breath
). and raw and damp as death.
AThese women three, these fearful shapes,
oked at me through Newgate stone,
d raised their fingers, skinny acd lank,
whispering low in under tone:—
lzPs hour draws near,—he's one of us,—
Ris gibbet They is built,—his noose is tied;
TheheY have
law of blood put his name on his coffin lid:
shall be satisfied.
7.et'etehall rest with us and his name shall be
-** °Y-word and a mockery.'
AILI whispered to one, What hadst thou done?'
lt answered, whispering, and I heard—
elleugh a chime rang at the time—
very sentence, every word.
time—
Clear above the pealing bells:—
!psi was mad, and slew my child;
lietter than life, God knows, I loved it;
Set pain and hunger drove me wild.
Scorn and hunger, and grief. and care,
And I slew it in my despair
Aud for this deed they raised the gibbet;
For this deed the noose they tied ;
Arid I hung and swung in the sight of men,
And the law of blood was satisfied.'
4.,„.`1 said to the second, ' What didst thou?'
Ilex keen eyes flashed unearthly shine.
married a youth whenl was young,
And thought all happiness was mine;
•idut they stole him from me, to fight the French ;
And I was left in the world alone,
To beg or steal—to live or die,
Robbed of my stay, my all, my own.
England stole my Lord from me,--
I stole a ribbon, was caught and tried;
Alid And the law of blood was satisfied.'
I,`aid to the third, ' What crime was thine ?'
' t she answered in accents meek,
And smiles
• e abe that sucks at its mother's breast,
Is• with its little dimpled check,
Anot more innocent than I.
unt truth was feeble error was strong ;
desg.uiltl.ess of. a deed of shame,
Justice did me cruel wrong.
Trph,_eY would not hear my truthful words:
"eney thought me filled with stubborn pride.
'loci I hung and swun in the sight of men,
And the law of blood g was satisfied.'
" Then one and all, by that churchyard wall,
11,.._aised their skinny hands at me;
Thee voices mingling like the sound
Of rustling leaves in a withering tree:
hour has come, he's one of us;
• 41,13 gibbet is built his noose is tied ;
41, is knell shall ring, and his corpse shall swing,
• kind the law of blood shall be satisfied.'
• They vanished 1 I saw them, one by one,
With their bare blue feet on the drifted snow,
To
like a thaw, when the sun is up,
-co their wormy solitudes below.
Though you may deem this was a dream,
Pot.
Y gets are tangible facts to me ;
sight grows clear as death draws near,
jet And looks into futurity."
ii"at., however, in horrors does the
.muse of Charles
ari:',/',aY delight. The dells and solitudes of nature
4- .118 welcomer retreats. Notice, for example, the
thee.s ardour of the description of the scene when
Yellow moon was shining, and—
_
'• Beautifully still
L'ltY Lochlin in his beams—Lochlin whose breast
afted so oft the chieftains of the west
•''" bloody warfare; Lochlin, that of yore
The galleys of the Gael to battle bore
Against the men of haughty Innisfail; t ochlin of storms, where Fingal spread hissail
To meet Cuehullin; Lochlin of the spears ;
Blue Lochlin of the songs of ether years."
4!etiines we regret to see the natural rgs.ushofpoetic
etten •
" Drop o
of „_ impeded, as it were, by the very intensityf
Arnir emotions of the writer. In the
bald, osia," for instance, he degenerates into the
of saying—
end " L. et me alone, nor vex my 50u.1," &c.;
le mimed afterwards he sinks into the vulgar-
iti ef Writing—
.. Sad, till I grasp it, the time appear,
A„,,, Into hours the weeks I'd pack," &e.
"tn) in " The Follower," he turns a solemn, and

even thrilling, description into the veriest balderdash,
by exclaiming—
" He besets my daily path,
I am the victim of his wrath :
He smears his fingers o'er my meat."
Aid occasionally the rhyming is indifferent, as
when, in " Let us alone," recurs—
" Your petty jars,
Your wicked wars," Sze.
Howbeit we only mention these minor blemishes, for
he purpose of showing that as we are not blind to
the faults of the volume, so neither are we the less
enthusiastic in our estimation of its excellencies. We
should be most churlishly fastidious were we to
squabble over a good, melodious, and heart-spoken
book of poetry, such as these " Voices from the
Mountains." Hyper-criticism is our abhorrence, and
we have merely enumerated the foregoing flaws as a
token that our opinion of the work is in no respect
biassed. We cannot be indifferent, while we hearken
to such strains as this :
Wouldst thou know what the blithe bird pipetb,
high in the morning air?
Wouldst thou know what the bright stream singetb,
Rippling o'er pebbles bare?
Wouldst thou know what the moon diseourseth,
To the docile sea?
Wouldst thou hear the echoes of the music
Of the far infinity?
Sorrow shall ope the founts of knowledge,
And heaven shall sing to thee."
Cordially we commend this book to the public ; it is
the effusion of a sincere poet, and of an unaffected
lover of the people.

ATHELSTAN, A TRAGE t)Y ; LIFE AND
DEATH, AN ALLEGORY; AND OTHER
POEMS. By Edmund H. White.
Among the numerous marks of the progress made
of late years in civilisation and the general diffusion
of knowledge, is conspicuous the appearance of
authors in all departments of literature, in all classes
of society. Formerly, whenever literary talent was
exhibited by persons of a subordinate position in the
community, it was regarded as a phenomenon rather
than a matter of ordinary occurrence. Such a phe-
nomenon, in the days of antiquity, was the incom-
parable /Esop, the Phrygian slave, and the witty
Terence, the freedman of Lucanus. Such, again,
in modern times, was Chatterton, the attorney's
clerk. Now, however, the fact is not the exception
so much as the rule itself. In all the various depart-
ments of belle lettrcs we could point to very distin-
guished authors, who have sprung from very lowly
occupations, from Gifford, the .leviathan of critics,
to the three great national poets of Ireland, France,
and Scotland; Moore, the son of a hatter—
Beranger, the waiter at a tavern—and Burns,
the ploughman, and the son of a ploughman.
Instead of depreciating the high and almost divine
dignity of the art, as might he thought by the Lord
Foppington school of readers, it only graces and
adorns that art the more, by accumulating round it,
as it were, the spoil of so many more individual
minds. Especially has this been visible in lyric and
dramatic poetry. Now-a-days we can enumerate a
brilliant band of minor poets, sprung directly from
the people—Ebenezer Elliot, Thom the weaver,
Thomas Miller, the late William Motherwell, and the
late Robert Nichol!. Those men are, or were,
honourable instances of the class we would indicate;
they severally and collectively elevate the trade to
which they belong to a higher consideration than they
might otherwise have obtained ; for, although it were
an extravagance to expect to find a James Hogg
under the plaid of every Ettrick shepherd, a Thom at
every weaver's bench, an Elliot in every humble house
in Staffordshire, or a Miller behind every counterin the
metropolis, it were equally an extravagance to treat
those shepherds, those weavers, or those shopkeepers,
with discourtesy when we find amongst them men
endowed with as delicate and refined susceptibilities
as those of gentle blood. Another class has now
given forth its bard, his first effusions being nothing
less pretending than a tragedy, an allegory, and
fugitive verses. Edmund H. White is a guard on
the Great Western Railway, and he certainly shows
himself to be a guard of considerable imagination, of
no little sensibility, and of a not wholly neglected
education. One advantage must, we would believe,
inevitably result from the publication of " Athelstan."
The tragedy must produce, at the least, one beneficial
consequence ; it must conduce to the elevation of the
particular class to which its author belongs ; it must
render a railway guard less liable to the incivilities
with which, like all other public servants, he
has been hitherto treated. People will reflect,
after hearing of this production of Edmund
H. White, that it is not altogether impossible that
the railway guard or the railway porter may be a
creature of as refined sentiments, and as delicate sus-
ceptibilities as themselves. Misfortune may have
dragged men of classical education—and we have
known instances—down to that position ; and insolence
to such is as abhorred as it is to yourselves. Remem-
ber that ; remember the book written by Edmund H.
White, and restrain your impetuosity of manner and
language ; take a lesson from the French, gentle
public, to whom every artizan in his blouse and his
peaked cap is worthy of a " Monsieur" and a saluta-
tion. Although we can say but very little in com-
mendation of Athelstan itself, we can certainly say
much less in praise of the Allegory. Among the
fugitive verse=, again, many are irredeemably bad, as
when in rhyme the writer says—
"'Tis a glorious sight, on a summer's night,
To gaze on old ocean's breast;
While the moon's pale ray o'er its bosom plays,
As it silently takes its rest."
The author, too, had better have thumbed his
grammar before he r-rered the poetic tablet, and there-
by have prevented the publication of such stuff as the
following :
" Its bosom then seems, like our childhood's dreams,
Innocent, calm, and serene ;
And the stars which glow, in the waters below,
Enchantment adds to the scene."
When we come, moreover, to such euphonious twad-
dle as the subjoined, we are compelled to desist from
further examination of the volume :
"For three long weeks he vainly sought
Employment, far and near ;
His children nightly round him ran
With hungry bellies, pale, and wan,
And eyes dimmed with a tear."
The book should have gone through a careful and
competent supervision before being printed.

SYLVAN'S PICTORIAL HANDBOOK TO
THE ENGLISH LAKES.
Having already noticed in terms of deserved eulo-
gium the elegant, though somewhat costly volume
upon the " Scenery and Poetry of the English
Lakes," written by Dr. Charles Mackay, we can,
with double reason, express our approbation of this
Hand-book to the same picturesque localities of
Cumberland. Every advantage possessed by the
former publication is (with the exception of the
elegant letter-press, by the accomplished author
of the " Salamandrine") compacted together
into a size much more convenient, and at a
price much more within the reach of the multitude.
We have no hesitation in declaring " Sylvan's Hand-
book to the Lakes" to be the most popular guide to the
most bewitching landscapes in England; clear and
distinguishable in arrangement, elegant in general
appearance, and plentifully besprinkled with engrav-
ings from original sketches by Thomas and Edward
Gilks. Of the illustrations, especially, we can speak
in the highest praise. Minute, at times almost mi-
croscopic in dimensions, they are yet pencilled with
a skill and faithfulness that betoken not merely an
admiration for the natural beauties around Derwent-
water and Windermere, but a full and delicate appre-
ciation of the poetic genius associated with those
realms of woodland and water. In one page we have
here delineated the entrance to a village within a circle
of the circumference of a shilling piece; in another, a
champaigne country ; in another, a mountainous dis-
trict, or a cataract, such as that at Lodore, described
so quaintly, but vividly, in Southey's rhymes :
The cataract strong
Then plunges along,
Conflictingly strong.
Striking and raging, as if a war waging,
Its caverns and rocks among.
Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping,
Showering and springing,
Flying and flinging,
Writhing and wringing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around,
With endless rebound,
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in,
Confounding,
Astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the car with its sound."
Sylvan, as the name bespeaketh, is an earnest lover
of quotations sylvan, of solitudes sylvan, of pano-
ramas sylvan. Were the volume only opened as a
wile to the valetudinarian in his arm-chair, it would
convey an impression almost tantamount tom a bodily
visit to the scenes it depicts. As a paio
however, into Cumberland, it will prove most valu-
able, we should say rather, perhaps, invaluable. The
arrangement is singularly excellent, and the classifi-
cation of the names at the conclusion is elaborated to
the most minute particularity. Several inimitable
maps are scattered through the " Hand•book," from
the first map-engraver in the United Kingdom—Mr.
James Wylde ; forming not the least important or
least interesting feature inn t
entire publication.

SIR PATRICK STUART, GOVERNOR OF MALTA.—
e have much pleasure in announcing that private let-
ters from Malta by the overland mail just arrived, bring-
ing dates thence to the night of the 13th of July, an-
nounce that his Excellency the Governor had greatly
improved in health during the preceding fortnight • but
very hot weather had set in, which it is desirable he
should avoid. The new chief secretary. Mr. LUShillgtOD,
had not arrived.