The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-01 00:00:00

HOOD'S MAGAZINE.

This Magazine opens with a poem from the pen,
we presume, of the Editor, in which occur some beau
tiful touches of feeling. It is, however, too much
an echO of the " Song of the Shirt," but we can
readily overlook this fault in consideration of the
valuable moral it inculcates. The subject of the
poem is the " Lady's Dream," and it describes a
young female of rank and fashion who falls asleep,
and in her dreams is visited by the ghosts of those
wretched, hard-worked females who have worn away
their lives in toiling night and day to furnish her,
and others in her situation, with splendid apparel.
We quote the closing passages of this vision. The
lady herself is supposed to be relating it, and thus
gives vent to her tardy
,remorse :
" Of the hearts that daily break,
Of the tears that hourly fall,
Of the many, many troubles of life,
That grieve this earthly ball—
Disease and Hunger, and Pain and Want,
But now I dreamt of them all !
"For the blind and the cripple were there,
And the babe that pined for bread,
' And the houseless man, and the widow poor
Who begged—to bury the dead ;
The naked, alas, that I might have cla,d,
The famished I might have fed!
"The sorrow I might have soothed,.
And the unregarded tears ; •
For many a thronging shape was there,
From long forgotten years,
Ave, even the poor rejected Moor,
Who rais'd my childish fears!
" Each pleading look, that long ago
• I scann'd with a heedless eye,
Each face was gazing as plainly there,
As when I passed it by ;
Woe, woe for me if the past should be
Thus present when I die !
"No need of sulphureous lake,
No need of fiery coal,
• But only that crowd of human kind
Who wanted pity and dole •
In everlasting retrospect— •
Will wring my sinful soul!
"Alas! I have walked through life
Too heedless where I trod;
Nay, helping to trample my fellow worm,
And fill the burial sod—
Forgetting that even the sparrow falls
Not unmark'd of God!
" I drank the richest draughts ;
And ate whatever is good--
Fish, and flesh, and fowl, and fruit,
Supplied my hungry mood ;
But I never remembered the wretched ones
That starve for want of food!
"I dressed as the noble dress,
In cloth of silver and gold,
With silk, and satin, and costly furs, .
In many an ample fold
But I never remembered the naked limbs,
• That froze with winter's cold.
• " The wounds I might have heard!
The human sorrow and smart !
And yet it never was in my soul
To play so ill a part :
But evil is wrought by want of ThOught.
As well as want of Heart !"
She clasp'd her fervent hands,
And the tears began to stream ;
Large, and bitter, and fast they fell,
Remorse was so extreme ;
And yet, oh yet, that many a Dame
Would dream the Lady's Dream !
_

The lines-which we have marked in Italic convey
an impressive moral truth. The " Strange Student"
is a somewhat fantastic story, and relates to the suicide
of an imaginative young man who falls a victim to his
own high-wrought fancies. The *story is not ill-
written, but there is nothing in it that calls for par-
ticular remark. " Nature and Art" consists of a cor-
respondence between two individuals, one of whom had
gained a prize in the Art-Union Lottery, and describes
the annoyance to which he was subjected owing to his
acquisition of that prize. The correspondence is divert-
ing, and quizzes picture-lotteries in a very Whimsical and
good-natured manner, The Installation" is a story, the