The Sun.
London, England, 1850-06-11 00:00:00

Mutato ?tontine de to fakula narrates.
But suddenly my gaze from liquid plains
Turns to the verdant coverts of the glade.
"Where thro' crisp foliage tinkle summer rains,
Where panting fawns_laie to the leafy shade;
Depths of old forests, where in pencils stream
Thro' twinkling boughs the shreds of solar beam.
There tall in stature, nimble, healthful, strong,
Ver features chiselled to a manly grace,
Fair Delia stirs the dewy fern among;
Nerve in kir tread and rapture on her face,
Printing soft rage of moss from gnarlii root,
While blithely tripping-o 4 her buskin'd foot.
Her perfect limbs, iu naked smoothness seen,
Glairce-jiot siith—ointbie 4-licit& Maly hue,
Thro' the pale'tunie dYel an apple gum,
And.citictured with a belt like sparkling dew.
We have left ourselves only space for a hasty notice
of the conclusion of the poem ; the grandeur and the
beauty of the mythologic vision fades from before the
eye of the poet, and his heart seems fainting with a
chill of despondency; in his own words,
A grief like death-pains trembling with dismay
Droop'd o'er my spirit in the twilight gray,
when amid the gathering darkness a celestial harmony
rings around him, soft as
The breeze that like a dulcimer
Ripples the green leaves with its sweet control
The fitful zephyr that in lonely hours
Rustles the umbrage with the sound of showers;
and with the harmony comes a great light, and in the
midst of the harmony and the light stands revealed the
beauteous vision of Aletheia,—
Naked, in perfect chastity she stands,
No veil but glory robing' all her limbs,
Her velvet tresses shading *ith gold bands
Sweet orbs wherein benignant beauty swims.
Richer in myst'ries thOse cerulean eyes
Than the blue problem of crystalline skies.
•Ai * , C•
Truth in the aspect of a maiden fair,
Truth all unveiled in' every visual grace,
Truth with celestial glory in her hair,
Truth with eyes clear and calm, translucent face,
Truth in unutterable beauty view'd
Stands the sole witness of my solitude.
This lovely vision discourses to him in high Platonic
strain—

' With flute-like cadence, sad yet comforting.
As when the vernal breezes, low, discuss
Through sedges green the promise of the spring,
So from her mouth the liquid concord flows
Thoughts' fragrance issuing from a vermeil rose.
She tells him that in worshipping the beauteous forms
of the olden mythology, " he has bowed in the con-
tentment of his downward course to the pale ghost of
Evil in its shroud," and has rendered " sin beatified
his law." She teaches him how these different god-
heads were but the incarnations of mere human qualities,
more often evil than good—she tells him their
empire ended when "`God's panic shuddered o'er the
land and main," and then magnificently shadows out
that new moral world of Faith, Hope, and Love,
which is destined to be the home of a more emalted
humanity than could ever have beea realised in the
sensuous dream-land of the poets. The heart and
intellect of the poet renew themselves in the eloquence
of her wisdom as with the freshness of the morning,
and the poem thus concludes :
O'er the still copse, cool breathing dawns the morn
As o'er my soul another dawn dispreads
It's inner radiance, while from every thorn
Its tears of dew the matin twilight sheds:
Earth with diurnal pomp renews her youth,
And all my heart is Love, and all my being Truth.
It will be seen by the length of our notice, and the
number of our extracts, that we think highly of this
poem. Personally we are grateful to Mr. Kent, end
we feel confident that many of his readers will be so
likewise, for having so completely carried us aloft out
of the smoke and stir of this dim, ever-toiling nine-
teenth century, into the calm and serene air of those
happy climes that lie
" Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky."
I It is one of the pet cants of the day to demand of the
poet, in an age of railroads and ragged schools, that
be should make ragged schools and railroads poetical.
This is no creed of ours; on the contrary, the more
the spirit of competition and the curse of over-
crowded misery presses upon our actual life,
the more, as it seems to us, does it become
the mission of the poet to find us an escape from the
evils of our world of fact, by opening up to us fresh
and beautiful worlds of wonder, and enchantment,
and joy. This, we confess it, is one great source of
our delight in this poetry of Mr. Kent's ; it is more
fresh, more unhacknied, more full of hope and faith,
youth and love ; with more of the dew of the moun-
tain side, and less of the dust of the thoroughfare
upon it, than any cotemporary verse with which we
are acquainted. It is a book of all books for a river-
side or woodland holiday : a book uncursed by the
strained tension of thought, or convulsive spasms of
passion, which combine to make so much of what
now passes far poetry either a metaphysical puzzle,
or a maniac rant. With Mr. Kent, thank God, we
can still " fleet the time merrily, as they did
in the golden world ;" still charm our ears
with the sustained harmony of most musical num-
bers, and delight our minds with an ever-varying
succession of the most beautiful imagery. That this
poem of " Aletheia " is in some respects defective, we
are not disposed to deny ' • the writer, intoxicated with
the delightful exercise of his own creative fancy, has
forgotten that his readers may not feel the same inte-
rest that he does in the beings of his mind; he has,
perhaps, in some instances, given too great promi-
nence to the minor names of the classical mythology,
and by an over sedulous anxiety for completeness of
enumeration, has thrown en air of pedantry and
learned trifling over some of his stanzas; then his
mythological glossary is questionably advantageous.
The length of our notice prevents our at present ex-
tending our remarks to the minor poems comprised in
the volume, and which, if we mistake not, will at least
equal in popularity the more immediate subject of our
present criticism. These we must reserve for a future
occasion.

BRITANNIA BRIDGE.
MENAI STRAITS, MONDAY AFTERNOON.—The float-
ing of the first tube of this stupendous structure for the
down line of rail from London to Holyhead came off
this morning, at half past seven o'clock. To facilitate
tke success of this critical operation a preliminary one
had been gone through for the purpose of bringing the
tube to a particular bearing point, whence it would here
to start fur its ultimate destination a distance of some
200 yards over the waters to the base of the piers in-
tended to support it. This latter movement. it will be
remembered, involving a vast amount of cautious work,
was accomplished a week or two ago by swinging the
tube on its flotilla of pontoons round, so as to describe a
semicircular sweep over the water of about 1,400 feet,
and thereby bringing it to the spot whence it started
this morning. At seven o'clock all engaged in the
operation were at their posts. The Liverpool pilots were
parcelled out by fifties at each of the tour great asp-
stens, the watchword was sent round from point to
point along the straits by Captain Claxton through his
speaking trumpet to ascertain that the tackle was right
and tight, and by Mr. Stephenson by means of flags and
an alphabetical telegraph. At about a quarter to eight
o'clock the fluid attachments were cut by a phalanx of
seafaring men with axes, and the tube on its pontoons
took the tide of the Mensi, thoenfeeat_t
faabrohuitghl2erfethettn
waso9
to
inches in the ascendant, gradually increasing to 111 feet
6 inches, and ultimately, by the time that it had reached
tthoen pseixhe raps,
net
expected.
anax imlstgugniirie unnecessaryogfatemaximum nearly
2 necessarily hazardous at every repetition.
floatingTehiapoonns-
o powerP r tj
of
3 to,otohoe tons,towers t the
in
immensee
safety.
speconveyed
thueP°tnubtheeil
its transit, Mr. Stephenson, me
Mr. Edwin Clarke, Mr. Brunel, Mr." la
Biddr.erL,
and Captain Claxton. Starting at a quarter to eight
o'clock, the tube, amid the cheers of the multitude on
either shore, " came home to the foot" of the piers at It
minutes past eight o'clock, and at 36 minutes
past eight
it was placed successfully in the recesses of the tower on
the Anglesey aide. Owing to the rapidity and preci-
sion with which the grand movement was aocomplished,
the whole only occupying about 50 minutes, the tide was
" taken" about 30 minutes at least too early. Owing to
this the pontoons had to remain for nearly one hour
under the tube until they could be removed, in effecting
which one of them, with its 10. inch cable, from the
rapid course of the tide, bore down a gigantic, frame-
work of some 60 feet high from one of the tube., and
were near it, but as regards everything else there vie
wanhi4i'd theheildosantoctltehaerecdo,nmtiniggherhyafvertufanllaetnelyontafn°7ll"wh:
perfect freedom from accident. _
ingenious -method, dteovlse by
bridge,Mr cLo.utCleclertek:
to aseertain
contraction of the tube. With this
the expansion and
th
one
Ae
.ovferthye
view an index is attached
engineers, has been adopted
with a strong iron arm, and again with a spirit
level to ~a:graduated scale of inches, and by which
means every variation in the mass of metal as af.
I-egged-by either motion or atmospheric influence is re-
gistered. The bridge in this
it: ayg ebyofpeenvecrilyzntrin aarks,,
tually records its own condition every day. Besides
registering the effect of the passage
sad
the result of every load over its own aurtace, this ad-
mirable contrivance, or tell-tale, places on its tablet, for
the use of the engineers, the effect of every wind that
sweeps by, and of every atmospheric influence that
affects it.

The hydraulic apparatus is in its place, so that the
raising of the tube will take place almost immediately
atter the necessary stone work at the side is built Le,
which will occupy about ten days. The fourth' tube,
which is to complete the stupendous structure, will be
floated about the 20th of July next, should the tido& b.
sufficiently favourable. The entire undertaking
it is expected, be complete by October.
The weather, as may be imagined, was unexception-
ably fine and favourable. Every hotel in Bangor was
crowded with visitors. Many came by the steam-vessels
frora Carnarvon and Liverpool, and by train from
:Cl*kr, and the s'nt

The ventriloquist, .I‘.lr. Love, was last night sl-
gaged to present one of his celebrated vocal entertainments
b/tore a large min at the residence of Lord Carrington/ at
Whitehall'

the Sylvan Geddes!, we are almost templed to et.
claim—