The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-17 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, APRIL 17, 1868.

so violent and prejudicial, that it defeats itself as
to achieving any definite purpose, and only shows
the narrow limits in which the question is con-

sidered.

The visit of the Prince and Princess of WALES to
he sister country has already fulfilled the most
sanguine anticipations formed of its results. The
loyal enthusiasm manifested by the people has con-
vincingly testified to the Heir Apparent and his
consort that whatever disaffection exists in Ireland
it has no influence over the community at large,
nor does it refer in any way to the reigning power.
The cordial shouts of welcome resounding from the
well-lined quays and streets and pier to greet the
first arrival of the royal vessel gave token of the
intense gratification with which an eager and
excitable people received the intended compli-
ment, and all through the line of procession
the houses and the pavements, and, indeed, every
available space for eight-seeing, were thronged with
spectators. Yesterday, at Punchestown races, the
same scene was repeated. The weather, happily,
has hitherto been exceedingly propitious, so that
there has been no check or disappointment to the
holiday-seekers even inithat direction, although the
scene is laid in the " Isle of Showers." So early as
seven o'clock in the morning the railway station
was completely besieged, although there were
enough loyal sight-seers left in Dublin to line the
steets through which the Prince and Princess
passed at a later hour en route to the station.
At Punchestown itself the concourse was immense,
the greater portion of the population of five or six
neighbouring counties assembling there. Excur-
sion trains had run from Dublin, Limerick, and
Cork, and these were gladly taken advantage of by
the inhabitants of those districts. Punchestown is
always a favourite place of resort, but it has never
witnessed so large a gathering as on this occasion.
The races were to most of the spectators a very
secondary feature in the programme, but they went
off extremely well. The conduct of the people hasbeen
extremely good, their national good humour showing
itself to full advantage, and their loyalty being
manifested by addresses from the most remote
parts. We must give the crowds which have every-
where attended the progress of the Prince and
Princess full credit for their good behaviour, be-
cause they;were not all citizens of the capital or even
of the leading towns, but a large proportion came
from rural districts and distant counties. The rail-
way companies have naturally seized the opportu-
nity of making money, and have run excursion
trains at low fares from various quarters. The
visit of the Prince and Princess at this
juncture is taken as a proof of confidence
which touches the hearts of the Irish,
always sensitive to such impressions very deeply,
and the strongest proof of how little hold Feni-
anism really has on the hearts of the people is found
in the fact that it has not dared to lift its head in
presence of the general enthusiasm.
It is much to be regretted that amidst the gene-
ral rejoicing the harmony of the day should be
broken by the news of a reckless and daring assas-
sination. Mr. FEATIIERSTONHAUGH, of Bracklyn
Castle, county Westmeath, was shot dead as he
was driving from the railway station at Killucan.
The murderer was so close to the car that Mr.
FEATHERSTONHAUGH'S clothes were singed by the
fire. No arrest has yet been made, but we
hope that before long the criminal may be detected.
It is said the murder was committed in revenge for
some evictions, and, if so, the police will know in
what direction to search for the murderer. Such
crimes as these, which no alleged injustice can
palliate, are serious drawbacks to the national pro-
gress. They produce and foster that feeling of mis-
trust and suspicion which leads to absenteeism and
neglect. Ireland bitterly resents the consequence, but
she has no right to be surprised at it. Let us hope
that we are now witnessing the inauguration of
better and happier times, iu which law and order
will be strictly maintained, not by foreign soldiers
or even by the national constabulary, but by the
people themselves, who will feel and acknowledge
that they can secure just and honourable treatment
without resorting to the torch of the incendiary or
the pistol of the assassin.

LAW INTELLIGENCE.—This Day.

COURT OD' QUEEN'S BENCH,

Before the Lord Chief Justice and Justices Lash
and Hannen.)

GOODYER V. LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY,

Mr. Higgins, ;in this case, moved fora rule nisi
to show cause why the verdict which had been
given in this case for the plaintiff should not
be set aside on the ground of insufficient
evidence. The action was originally brought by
the plaintiff against the defendants to recover the
value of some cattle which had been killed, it was
alleged, through the negligence of the defendants.
The
plaintiff was a butcher at Preston, and at-
tended the Manchester cattle market, and on the
occasion in question he purchased a number of bulls,
and cows which were driven to the Orsdale-
lane Station of the London and North-
Western Railway for transmission to Pres-
ton. The cattle were not delivered at the
proper time, and when inquiry was made it was
found that three of the cows were dead and the
others greatly injured. It was said by the de-
fendants that the animals were not sent at the
proper time to the railway station, and that in
consequence they were detained, and the injury
occurred during that time, and was quite beyond
the control of the railway company.
Mr. Justice Lush said at the trial it appeared
that three of the cows had died through being
trampled upon, and the question was whether there
had been any injury to the cattle whilst being trans-
mitted, through a collision or any other circum-
stance of the time.

Mr. Higgins said it was most improper under any
circumstances to place all the cattle together, not-
withstanding it was said that the oxen were pro-
perly secured.
The court granted a rule to show cause.

LITERATURE.

Walt Whitman's Poems.

Poems by Walt Whitman. Selected and Edited by
William Michael Rossetti. One Vol., pp. 403.
J. C. Rotten.
Opening this book has been to us a revelation.
Reading it has yielded us exquisite pleasure. The
remembrance of it sweetens life. Echoes from it
haunt us in the thick of our occupations, " under
the shade of melancholy boughs," in the throng of
the streets, at our meals, in the midst of our conversa-
tions, anywhere, everywhere, under the likeliest and
the unlikeliest circumstances. Before the volume
now under notice came into our hands, the name
of Walt Whitman was certainly known to us,
but that was all. Now that we have read
these selections—observe, these selections—from
his " Chants Democratic," from his " Drum Taps,"
from his " Leaves of Grass," from his " Songs of
Parting," we have learnt to love that name of his, it
has become to us a synonym of pleasure, suggestive
of thoughts, emotions, aspirations, expressed as in a
new language, and, once so expressed, never after-
wards to be altogether forgotten. To William Michael
Rossetti, as the selecter of these poems, we are not
simply, in old-fashioned phrase, beholden, we are not
merely in courtlier terms his most obedient, we are
his very gratefully, and that, moreover, in heartfelt
truthfulness. Already in the columns of the clever
but now dead and gone Chronicle, under date 6th
July, 1867, the editor of this henceforth to us
cherished volume of Walt Whitman's Poems had
sounded the trumpet of admiration in praise of that
particular poet of America. Here, however, he has
made good, in every sense, his high, and, as it
might have seemed to some, extravagant com-
mendations. Of the justice of the estimate thus
enunciated,these poems yield absolute demonstration .
Apart from the selection now given to us by Mr. Ros-
setti, we are desirous that it should be understood at
once, however, by our readers, that we know no-
thing whatever of the writings of Walt Whitman.

This we would especially premise. And fora suffi-
cient reason. According to a very general rumour
even over here in England, according to the showin g
of even so enthusiastic an appreciator of his genius as
Mr. Rossetti has (happily for us all) shown himself to
be—Walt Whitman has written things that his own
most ardent admirers would willingly let die. Yet,
of all this, the volume now in our hand, here sub-
mitted to our consideration, bears not a particle of
evidence. The leering satyrs have been scared
away from among the beautiful umbrage. The dregs
lurk no longer in the limpid draught placed at our
lips. We can quaff without a qualm. There is no
canker in the rose-wreath as it is thus brought within

our reach—it is all fragrance and dripping with dew.
Not a taint is here, in bloom, or foliage, or fruit.
The very atmosphere investing these poems is all
purity, like the breath of morning. And yet—
though we never. should have conjectured as much
from these poems themselves—the Collective Writ-
ings of Walt Whitman must indubitably be tainted,
flawed, polluted—and that, too, with a taint, a
fl tw, a pollution in no conceivable way to be ex-
tenuated. Mr. Rossetti himself sets forth in regard
to the incriminated poems (all of which he has
carefully omitted in the process of making his selec-
tion) not one word, not one hint of extenua-
tion-. He says, indeed, that he considers " that
most of them would be much better away."
And, whatever else can be said of the editor of the
present volume as a critic of poetic literature, it
certainly cannot be said of him that he is a purist.
" Indecencies, improprieties, deforming crudities"
there are, he tells us, scattered, it may even be abun-
dantly scattered, here and there, over the Writings
of Walt Whitman. Such they are acknow-
ledged to be, in so many words, even by the critic
thanks to whose judicious hands those damning
blemishes have been discarded. Of their existence
at all, we only know, now, by their own evil reputa-
tion. They themselves are not here. Nevertheless
this selection is in no respect what we should call,
in the ordinary acceptation of the words, an Ex-
purgated Edition. There is here no emasculation.
The poems that are given are given in their en-
tirety. Mere parts have been nowhere selected.
Abbreviations, ollisions, excisions, the Editor

has shrunk from as from impertinences. Fle
has • done his task well and wisely. And yet,
task it can hardly be called—true labour of love as it
has been (and no wonder) throughiut. Although
containing within it " a little less," we are told
"tint half the entire bulk of Whitt-11.as poetry,"
this one volume affords a comprehensive view of

the writer's genius in its integrity. It is no
broken gem that is here placed in our hands
for examination, bat—" one entire and perfect
chrysolite." Before commenting upon Walt Whit-
man's poetical productions, however, so far as those
are here brought within our survey, a word or two
as to the man himself. Abraham Lincoln's excla-
mation on seeing him was—" Well, he looks like a
man !" Nor can that exclamation be wondered at
when one comes to sum 11P his characteristics.
Lofty in stature, admirably well proportioned, of
vigorous strength, of abounding health—forty-nine
years of age on the last day of next month—his
eyes of a light blue, his complexion florid, his beard
fleecy and flowing, but already quite grey—
cheerful and masculine in app.;arance
baying a predilection for the society of
common people—intensely feud of fine music, and
with a great natural taste for works of art—abso-
lutely indifferent " as to either praise or blame of
what he writes "—such, in brief, is Walt Whitman.
Born on the 31st of :llay, 1819, at the farm village
of West Hills, Long Island, in the State of New
York, somewhere about thirty miles from the great
Amaican capital and outport--he is but now in the
prime or meridian of his manhood, though already
old-looking in spite of his health, of his whole-
some out-door life, his temperate habits,
and his vigorous constitution. A schoolboy
up to thirteen, afterwards a compositor, then a
country teacher, then a press writer, then a news-
paper editor, then a master printer, then (like
his father) a carpenter and builder, then, throughout
the Great Civil War, to the Northern Army, what
Miss Nightingale was to the British Army at Scutari
throughout the War in the Crimea. And, yet all
along, and at last wholly and solely, what ho is now
for the rest of his days—a Poet. Before considering
him as such, it is but justice to remark of him in his
capacity as a practical philanthropist when attending
the poor soldiers all through that tremendous struggle
between North and South, between the Federals and
the Confederates in America, that—" It is said that
by the end of the war he had personally miuisLred
to upwards of 100,000 sick and wounded." llonour,
therefore, to the brave, true heart, if only in re-
membrance of that one recorded fact in his history

—a fact evidencing that Walt Whitman not only
" looks" but acts " like a mau." 'laming our
glance, however, from the man himself to his pro-
ductions, to those Poems of his which have been here
selected for us from his " Songs of Parting," his
"Leaves of Grass," his " Drum Taps," and so on— one
peculiarity is at once especially noticeable in regard to
them, and that is their startling, intense, and absolute
originality. In their manner, they are unlike any
other poems that have ever previously made their
appearance. As a rule, they are rhyineless. But,
always, always they are rhythmical, and yet
rhythmical after a manner peculiarly and excep-
tionally their own. The lines are of any length_
sometimes abbreviated to a little more than a
monosyllable—occasionally running out to the
extent of half-a-dozen alexandrines. /N ow stand-
ing, as one might say, on one foot, and that a-tip-
toe—now running along upon as many feet as those
of a centipede. But—with all this whimsicality and
abandon of manner, with all this wild defiance of
the hitherto dominant laws of poAical, and, for
that matter even at times of rhetorical, construe-

tion—•O the charm, the grace, the t3nderness, the
pathoz, the abounding and captivating beauties
scattered broadcast, with a lavish hand, with a❑
affluent fancy, with the royal prodigality of genius,
over these pages of true poetry ! Nor can the dar-
ing originality thus manifested by Walt Whitman
in the mere manner of his composition be regarded
as so wholly unexampled. As has been admirably
well asked—

Was genius awed by Aristotle's rules
Whou Simkspero burst the cobwobm of the school; ?"

Flinging to the wiudg of heaven all the precedents

of literature, this new poet of the New World, a
poet intensely sui generis, one racy of the soil from
which he has sprung, carves out his own way with
a pen as trenchant as an axe, and goes upon that
way of his rejoicing. About the one only rhymed
passage in the whole of this otherwise quite rhyme-
less volume of poetry, is the opening of the song in
celebration of the broad-axe in the " Chants De-
mocratic." And, having but just now—in total for-
getfulness at the moment, alike of that especial
passage and of that particular song—likened Walt
Whitman's pen, in the trenchant sweep of it, to an
axe, such as it might be seen gleaming and crashing
when wielded in the grip of a backwoodsman of
thews and sinews like his own—upon our sudden
remembrance immediately afterwards of his own
words, the simile appears more than ever most ap-
propriate. For, thus it is that Walt 'Whitman, in
his " Song of the Broad Axe," apostrophises that—
. Weapon, shapely, naked, wan ;
•
Head from the mother's bowels drawn !
Wooded flesh and metal bone ; limb only one,
and lip only one !
Grey-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve
produced from a light seed sown !

Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be let.ned, and to lean on."
A. pen no less potent, keen, piercing, than such a
broad axe, "to be leaned and to lean on," " rest-
ing the grass [Leaves of Grass] amid and upon "
--is, most assuredly, for us the pen of Walt
Whitman. Otherwise than in one fragmen-
tary instance like the foregoing, the book is,
as we have said, altogether rhymeless. Wonder-
fully rhythmical throughout, though in lines of
the most oddly varying lengths, the poems of
Walt Whitman—when the reader has once passed
the Rubicon—exercise over that initiated reader's
mind a potent and irresistible fascination. The
Rubicon must be passed, however, as a pre-
liminary, as the first and all-essential pre-
liminary of initiation. Meaning by that, simply,
that any ono coming to the examina-
tion of Walt Whitman's poems with a view
to their complete appreciation, must begin by, we
wont say taking this and that for granted, we wont
even say by making such and such allowances, for,
so expressing ourselves, we might seem to be slight-
ing the high inherent claims to respect of a great
original writer, such as Walt Whitman : instead of
that we will say then simply --that the
all-essential preliminary we are alluding to is
one purely of concession. Concede to Whit-
man the fashion of his verse—concede to
him his terse but never bald realism—concede to
him his exotic verbiage, his coinage of words occa-
sionally, with a daring disregard alike of the laws
of syntax and of philology—and the spell of the
magician is felt at once and for ever ! We are
within the circle of his poetic incantations ! He
" bath his will" thenceforth—as he lists—at his own
pleasure over our hearts, our emotions, our imagi-
nations. As exemplars, to begin with, of his magical
power in mere word-painting—take almost hap-
hazard a single line or verse picked out here an d
there from the midst of his descriptions :
"Evening—me in my room—the setting sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open windows,
showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing
in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart,
up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on
the opposite wall, where the shine is."
"The irregular tapping of rain down on the loaves, after
the storm is lulled."
"Me observing the spiral flight of two little yellow
butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending
high in the air.
"And the fish suspending themselves below there—and
the beautiful curious liquid."
" In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river,
with a wind-dapple here and there."
These word-paintings of Whitman's sometimes
pass by their very vividness into whimsicalities, yet
are, for all that, wondrous word-paintings never-
theless : as wiser e he speaks of—

" . . . dabs of music ;
Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of
the great organ."
His word-painting power goes with him every-
where. Into the shipbuilding yard, for example,
where we see with him, as if we, too, were there—
" The butter-coloured chips flying off in great flakes,
and slivers."
It goes with him, and we with it and with him,
through even the swinging of a door—
" The door passing the dissoverod friend, flushed
and in haste."
Sometimes the secret of it lies even in a word—
" The dim-lit church and the shuddering organ."
Or, again, as where conjuring up shapes before him
in his reverie, he speaks, among others, of—

"'The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod by
sneaking footsteps."
Or, yet more even, where brooding over many ex-
quisite imaginings, he says most oddly and whim-
sically—

" They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen."
Or, again in the same way, when, by one subtle
word, we note the last agonised kiss of bereaved
affection, when--
6, The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead
of the dying."
The merest specks and atoms of beauty, however,
are these little word-pictures noticeable in casual
lines and phrases in Walt Whitman's poetry. Im-
measurably more noteworthy are the large humanity
and the wide philosophy evidenced and inculcated
by his utterances. His cry is that of Happiness
and of Adoration—.

" For I do not see one imperfection in the universe."
Another while he declares—
" That all the things of the universe are perfect miracles,
each as profound as any."
And another while he ejaculates :
" The sun and stars that float in the open air ;
The apple-shaped earth and we upon it—surely the drift
of them is something grand !"

Adding—
" I do not know what it is:except that it is grand, and
that it is happiness."
Again, he is full of wonderment at the abounding
wonders around him, among others at—
" The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and
the wonders that fill each minute of time forever."
The wonder of wonders to him, however the
glory and consolation of his life—(the enunciation
of which, of the joy and solace of which to his fel-
low mortals, is among the most dearly-cherished
aspirations of his ambition) the one great end
worth living for, being, according to Walt Whit-
man—Death. Thus he exclaims—

" And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it
may ba turned to boautiful results—and I will show

that nothing can happen more beautiful than death."
It is thus that he speaks in his " Song at Sunset" of
—" the superb vistas of Death." • It is thus that in
his poem addressed " To one Shortly to Die," he
closes it not iu pity but in felicitation—

" I do not conunisoratc—l congratulate you."
It is thus he sings exultantly—

" I shall go with the rest.
We cannot be stopped at a given point—that is no satis-
faction,
To show us a good thing, or a few good things, for a space
of time—that is no satisfaction ;
We must have the indestructible brood of the best, regard-
less of time.
If otherwise, all these things come but to ashes of dung
If maggots and rats ended us, then alaruin ! for we are

betrayed !
Then indeed suspicion of death.
Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death 1 should

die now:
Do you think 1 could walls pleasantly and well suited to-

ward annihilation ?"
Consonant with his rapturous exultation in the
thought of Death, consonant with his homage for
the perfection of the universe, are his absolute confi-
dence in the reality of the future, and his profound
sense that all that is holiest has never yet in any way
been adequately realised or appreciated :
" I say the wholo earth, and all the stars in the sky, are

for religion's sake.
I say no man has ever yet been half Jevont enough,

None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough ;

Nono IEI3 bogu; to think how divine he hinisoli

and how cert tie the futuro is."
Hence he sings, hence he is a Poet, hence he un-
dertakes in these poems of his to write the " evangel-
poem of comrades and love." Akin to his overflow-
ing delight in the thought of the Now and the Here-
after, are the largeness and the depth, the exquisite
self-abnegation and the all-embracing comprehen-
siveness of his humanity. To the very dregs and
scum and squalor of the evil streets of a
bad city he cries out—by a subtle violation of gram-
mar, as it seems to us, i. e., in the verb wo haTe
italicized in the subjoined quotation, appealing to

them as though he spoke with them from their owu
level—

"13ecause you are greasy and pimpled, or that you Was

drunk, or a thief,
Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or aro so now,
Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar,
and never saw your name in print,
Do yuu give is that you aro any loss immortal ?"
At the City Dead House in his " Leaves of
Grass," we see him standing—gazing—yearning,
in tenderest pity and commiseration over—what ?
over "an outcast form," indeed, over the body of
a poor dead prostitute—

"The divine woman, her body—l see her body—l look on

it alone,
That hous.., once full of passion and beauty—all else I

notico not ;
No stillness so cold, nor running water from faucot, nor
odours morbific impress me ;
But the house alone—that wondrous house—that delicate

fair housii—that ruin!
That immortal house, more than all the r.nvs of dwellings

over built,
Or white domed Capitol itsjlf, with mijastie figura sur-
mounted—or all the old high-iiiire,l c tthedrals,
That little house alone more than them all—poor desperate
house!
Fair, fearful work! tenement of a Soul ! it3olf a Soul !

Unclaimed, avoided houso ! take one breath from my
tremulous lips;
Take one tear, dropped aside as I go, for thought of you,
Dead house of love! house of madness and sin, crumbled!
crushed !
House of life—ere while talking and laughing—but, oh,
poor house! dead oven then ;
Months, years, an echoing, garnished house—but dead
dead, dead."
So wide, so profound, so insatiable are the yearnings
of this great heart for sympathy, that on turning to
his poem on " Envy" what do we find to be tho
cause of his Envy ? Not a perusal of the records of
heroism, not the thought of Mighty Generals or
Men in Power, but—when he reads of the brother-
hood of lovers—

" flow through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging,
long and long,
Through youth, and through middle and through old age,
how unfaltering, how affectionate, and faithful they

Were,
Then lam pensive—l hastily put down the book, and
walk away, filled with the bitterest envy."
In illustration of the same thought, or rather of
the same tender yearning for sympathy, read his
commemoration of " Parting Friends,—

" Two simple men I saw to-day on the pier, in the midst
of the crowd parting the parting of dear friends ;
The one to remain hung on the other's neck and pas-

sionately kissed him,
Whilst the one to depart tightly pressed the one to re-

main in his arms."
Or, still more, the Poet's apostrophe "To a
Stranger" :
" Passing stranger ! you do not know how longingly I look

upon you."
Most of all this yearning for sympathy shines forth
when it is recognised " Among the Multitude ;"
when, in other words, the Poet foresees it, thus—
" Among the men and women, the multitude
1 perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else—not parent, wife, husband,
brother, child, any nearer than / am:
Soma are baffled--But that one is not—that one knows

Ah! lover and perfect equal !
I meant- that you should discover me so, by my faint
indirections [indications ?];
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the
like in you."
So, too, he sees them afar off in foreign lands, those
breasts with whom his own could sympathise could
they but be brought into communion :-
0 I know we should be brethren and lovers—

I know I should be happy with them."
It were idle, however, attempting to afford the
reader any adequate notion of these poems as a
symmetrical whole, through mere fragmentary or
incidental quotations like those to which a reviewer
is necessarily restricted. [t would be worse than
the profferring of the specimen-brick by the house-
vendor in Hierocles—it would be the production of
a handful of splinters chipped off the Apollo Belvi-
dere, or of a stray finger torn from the Venus
de Medici. Whitman's Poems—as is the case with
every true work of art—must be viewed each in its
entirety before there can be any hope whatever of
their accurate appreciation. So regarded, they
cannot fail by any possibility, as we con-
ceive, to win the admiration to which they
are so signally entitled. After this fashion
alone Ulm, is to say at once, search-
ingly and comprehensively ought at any .
time to be examined, that noble apostrophe, be-
ginning at page 310, To Death, that profound
and heart-penetrating epitome of Human Life,
commencing at page 356, that no less effective and
affecting poem upon Night and Death which opens
at page 2613, but above all the magnificent
Nocturn upon the Death of President Lin-
coln, beginning at page 301, and, what is to our
mind even finer than that, the exquisitely pathetic
and nre-eminently beautiful celebration by Walt
Whitman of the first revelation to himself of his
own powers and future path in life as a poet, when,
as a little barefooted child, he stool upon the sea-
shore one evening and far on into the night, listen.
ing to the lamentations of the song-bird bereaved
of its mate, himself drowned in tears as he
listened—standing, there, entranced in the moon-
light drinking in the music of that delicate
and tender death-chant I Never before was the
song of a bird so put into human language
—never before was the rapturous anguish of the
poetic summons so articulated. It is Beranger's
Ala Vocation repeated : when—speaking of himself
as a mere infant—the old Chansonnier singe
to us—

" Uno plaint() touebanto,
Do ma bouch3 sortit;
Le bon Dieu mo dit : Chants,
Chant°, pauvre petit."
And now that Whitman has sung (and is still, for
that matter, happily singing in the midst of us) in
obedience to the holy mandate by which every true
poet is at the outset made aware of his vocation,
he has as profound a souse of the reality of that
summons, and of the consequent permanence or
security of his reputation as a Poet, as ever El Jraes
had when proudly forecasting his own poetic immor-
tality. Assuming to himself at once his right
position in English Literature, he has even, as it
happens, like almost all the more remarkable
poets iu our laugttage, selected, unconsciously it
may be, but unmistakably his own especial em-
blem ! Henceforth, as it seems to us, his inalien-
ably and no other's! A floral emblem to be wore
by him from this time forth as conspicuously
as the sprig of broom fastened of old on the
-helmet of the first Plantaganet. In this,
as we have just now intimated, it is with
him, as it has been before him with his compeers
and his congeners, the majority of the great poets
in our language. Has not Moore, for example, in
this way taken to himself for ever as his the sham-
rock—and Scott the purpling heather—and Camp-
bell the red velvet strings of love-lies-bleeding ?
llas not Keats his sprig of basil--and Blair his
branch of funereal yew—and Chatterton his trail of
lamenting willow ? But that Burns, again, accord-
ing his own showing, was endowed by his Muse (the
M use of Scotland) with the glistening bough of the
holly, he might perchance have contested with
Dan Chaucer the latter's now undisputed right to the
possession as his of the darling blossom of the daisy.
As indubitably, moreover, as the daisy be-
longs to Chaucer and the holly to Barns—
so
has Shelley assumed to himself the sensitive
plant, and Wordsworth the little celandine
and the daffodils, and Cowper the rose and the
water lily, and Leigh Hunt the flowering branch of
may, and 'Tennyson the gorgeous blossom of the
passion flower, if only by right of the " splendid
tear" shed upon it at the garden porch in " Maud,"
and Milton " the yellow cowslip and the pale prim-
rose," and Shakspere, for that matter, almost every
bloom.of the parterre or of the wilderness. And,
as it has been with those, so is it now and hence-
forth with this true American Poet Walt Whit-
man, who has made the lilac—the fragrant, blue-
ish-pink blossoms of the lilac—his own completely.
Earning the leaves of these poems, the reader may
say before the book is closed as the Poet himself
says or rather sings with a sort of rapture—
" Yet the lilac with mastorins oTyar holds Eno."
For it blossoms, and breathes forth its haunting per-
fume, and verdantly unfolds its delicate heart-shaped
leaves, again and again, all through these pages—
more especially in the great Nocturn on the Death.
of President Lincoln, And 60, With the fragrance

of the lilacs in our nostrils, and with the song of the
lamenting bird in our ears, and with the thought in
our hearts of the manly poet himself going his
sickening rounds in the ghastly hospitals, all through
the great American War, accompanied, as he went
down the wards, by his attendant, bearing sponge,
and pail, and lint, and ointment, for the cleansing
and the binding up of many loathsome wounds, wo
close this beautiful volume with a renewal of our
grateful acknowledgments to Mr. Rossetti, and with
a benison to Walt Whitman.

et-MLAY-i
-44,u.
Caulk

HER MAJESTY.

-0-

WINDSOR CASTLE, April 16.
The Queen, accompanied by their Royal High-
DeSSC3 Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice, drovo
in the Great Park this morning.
iler Majesty honoured Lord and Lady Bridport
with a visit.

LATEST INTELLLGENCE

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

THE WAR IN ABYSSINIA.

Sir S. Northcote has received the following tele-
gram from Sir R. Napier, dated March 23 :

" Sir R. Napier marches to-day from Latt with
advanced column ; -troops moved with provision,
but no baggage, yesterday. Crossed a pass tea
thousand feet high. Staveley with second column
one day in rear ; one day in rear of Staveley
elephants with guns, with reserve ammunition
coming on well. Distance from advanced camp
to Magdala 60 miles. Colonel Phayre reconnoi-
tred 20 miles in advance. Theodore at Magdala
exhibits uneasiness. Intention uncertain. Troops
full of spirits."