The Sun.
London, England, 1850-07-31 00:00:00

LI TERAT LIRE.

' ALETHEIA, AND OTHER POEMS. By
' William Charles KEizt. Messrs. Longman and Co.
The minor pieces containwd in this volume, of
whose principal poem we had occasion some time
back to speak in terms of high and richly-merited
eulogiuin, fully sustain, Mr. Kent's high character as
an accomplished wri :er, and an intuitive and ideal
artist, possessing very considerable powers of fancy
and of pathos, together with a felicity of expression
which no mere cultivation can ever give--the genuine
and unforced fruit of an originally poetic tempera-
ment. There is the same apparently careless beauty
of language, the same happy choice of imagery, the
same tenderness, and the same truth in these shorter
poems as in his longer and more sustained effort.'
The following sonnet on poor Keats seems pregnant
with the peculiar graces of Mr. Kent's style :
•' Another sadness round Apollo's fans;
A cypress wreath hung on his golden lyre;
A gleam of beauty born but to expire;
Another Cbatterton in heart and brain—
The doom of genius fell on earth again,
And, like a thunderbolt of Sapphic fire,
Blasted the rapture of thy young desire!
Again from out thy lips the deathful strain
Pour'd like the murmur of undying love.
Again the glory, and again the woe
Of bardic joy fell on then here below,
Fell but to lift thy fame to realms above.
A life had perfected thy form, but now
A torso of eternal grace art thou !"
T;le concluding line, concentrating- as it does in its
most quintessential forum the whole truth about Keats'
genius, is singularly- felicitous ; the sonnet itself
realises the ideal formed by Keats himself of this class
of composition,

" swelling loudly
Up to its climax:, and then dying proudly."

In the ver3es whin)). immediately succeed, upon
"Amelia; a Beloved Memory," there is a deep and
genuine pathos, which passes fresh from the soul of
the poet into the soul of the reader : " beautiful ex-
ceedingly" is this recollection of
" The smile of innocence and joy,
The smile (34' bright, seraphic rest,
Which hallo w'd, like a saint, the form
That died. upon my breast.
L gleams upon my mem'ry still,
It wafts me. back to years of old,
It glimmers on the darken'd Past
Like moanbeams on the wold."

Very beautiful, too, is this pure and delicate tracery
of a virtuous and gentle character :
"Thy sorrow fc.r fictitious woe,
Thy sympathy for true distress,
Thy tears of charity divine—
The tears that Gvd will bless—
Thy noble and unselfish mind,
Thy spotless and celestial youth,
Resembling in angelic dreams
The radian/ grace of Ruth.
Such recollections stream along
The channels. worn by floods of grief
And, oh! they pour upon my soul
A sad and born relief.
They bring t:e back to peaceful scenes,
To scenes an d things to you so dear,
And, at the potent touch of truth,
What buric?d thoughts appear!
Thoughts of thy bright, poetic taste,
Thy seer-like child-like love of hooks—
A love that shone within thine eyes,
And liv'd within thy looks."
Unless we are mists ken, in allowing ourselves to be
influenced by a very natural and indeed almost un-
avoidable feeling, the re must be great depth, delicacy,
and purity in the character of a writer who can so
admirably appreciate avid pourtray these qualities in
another. The following passages from a poem called
"An Elegy on the Old Year" are tinged with the
same tender melancholy, and are steeped besides in
that idyllic richness of expression which we have
already noted as an attribute of Mr. Kent's style
Weeds grow where I Jook'd for roses—weeds, weeds!
And the g'avc-mounds of the dead up-ripple the smooth

meads; .
Where rich grapes were lately peeping,
Knots of ivy boughs are creeping:
Thus with me, alas! Old Year, thy deeds
smiles have chang'd to weeping.
Fair sho was with youth and beauty—fair, fairl
Lip of vermeil, deep as sunset, molten gold her hair;
One she stood amidst a crowd,
She—withal sa nobly brow'd,
So pure, so mild—Old Year, thou hadst no love nor care,
Fur she is in her shroud."
The lines printed in italics need no comment to re-
commend them to tlw lovers of rich and picturesque
imagery. As a specimen of our author's style,
we extract the whole of the graceful little poem called

FEFINR IN THE CORN FIELD.
" Feline dearly loves her lover,
Loves him as the lark the morn;
Yet her love she'll ne'er discover;--
Reaping down the ripened corn.
He is timid of her beauty,
Timid as the fawn of eves,
.And his passion screens with duty;—
Swathing round the rustled sheaves.
She allows her thoughts to slumber
As at midnight bleep the flocks,
While his sighs her sighs outnumber;—
Propping up the yellow shocks.
What though he beside her tremble,
(Sunbeams weave a checquered shade!)
She 'will yet her love dissemble;—
Gleaning each forgotten blade.
For he has not told the glory
Of his loving hopes and fears;
And she hides her heart's fond story;—
Toying with the wheaten ears.
'Neath his gaze her pale cheek flushes,
Yet her love is still conceal'd,
While the last autumnal thrushes
Warble near the stubble field.
Feline speaks not, yet her glances
Tell of love in every look,
And while bohlly he advances
Downward drops his reaping hook.
Lo! his pent emotion gushes
Blindly forth in burning words;
While in ansver she but blushes—.
'Round them softly chaunt the birds.
Palm to palm their fingers mingle—
He so fervid, sire so chaste;
Thro' his arm warm pulses tingle
Circling 'round her supple waist.
All her grace of art he copies,
Bonding o'er her form so fair,
Twining scarlet leaves of poppies
In her auburn gloom of hair.
Fefine dearly loves her lover,
Loves him tia the lark the morn,
Now that both their love discover—
Breathing 'mid the golden corn."

The exquisitely tender lines on a " Mother's Love"
contain passages of a very high order of beauty ; our
citations must be limited to the following stanzas on
a topic abundantly fatniliar, but which has very rarely
been more gracefully handled :---
"Days of my boyhoodl wherefore did ye seem
So glad, and bright, and gloriow, and fair;
Why did ye flit-in such a joyous dream,
Giving a bluer beauty to the air:
Did the green river sp arkie clearer then,
Were the rimm'd daiaies whiter in those hours;
Came there a blither whistle from the wren,

Or sweeter perfume fro.m the meadow flowers?
I know not; but more softy stirr'd the leaves,
The cowslips bloom'd more golden in the grass,
Poppies tooled deeper scarlet in the sheaves,
And thyme smelt sweeter in its russet mass;
A richer ripeness gloom'd upon the fruit,
A pearlier dew hung glimmering on the sprays;
A darker purple deck'd Each violet's shoot,
And fraught with charms appear'd those mystic days."
Of all the minor pieces, ,however, in this volume, the
most remarkable is " Phillippo, the Dream -Haunted,"
a poem founded on " an old legend of a young man in
Languedoc, who, seeing an unknown lady in a dream,
pined away and died for the love of her, despairing."
In this Idyll (for such in truth it is) the shadowy
tenderness, the vague longing, the chill disenchant-
ment of a poet's love-dream are given with high
artistic power; it seems as though the teller of the
tale had drawn his inspiration from the waters of
Lethe, and, in the language of Keats " made his
rosary of yew berries,"
arid " suffered his pale fore-
head to be kissed by nightshade, ruby grape of Pro-
serpine." The reader finds himself in a climate
of mild and monotonous langour ; a visionary haze
wraps all objects in the hues of the unreal; only at
intervals the leaden air is streaked with some fever
flashes of a passion whose anguish soon merges
into despondency. How Phillippo, in the words of
his poet, " dies for the death of his delicious dream
and melts into oblivion" can only be learnt aright
from the poem itself. The following extract will give
some notion of the voluptuous richness of the
imagery which adorns it
" Then from night's solace I arose, and drain'd
The healthful coolness nature breathes at morn,
While my light step along th' elastic sod
Mov'd with elated pressure; when the dew
In sparkles glitter'd on the spider's web,
The fairy cordage of its network strung
From thorn to bramble, like most delicate lace
Powdered with diamonds; when the skyward lark
Shrilled thro' the vapour,: faint and fainter, till
its canticles of love were heard alone
By the Invi,ible; while tears of dawn
Hung pendant on the pendant cherries, each
A ruby with a twinkling crystal drop
From the " Burial of the Archbishop," a sombre and
solemn dirge, rich with the gleam of censers, and
resonant with funeral music, we take the following
passage of imitative melody :
" Echo all the crypts around,
Even every crevice dim,
With a sweet, but awful sound—
borrovea agonizing hymn.

Tuba mirum spargens sonum—
'Round the vaulted chambers ring,
Per seputchra regionum—
Where the silent dead we bring,
Coget omnes ante thronum,—
Sorrowfully murmuring."
Space fails us for further extract, and we Must con-
tent ourselves, therefore, with merely pointing out to
the reader's notice the two spirited and Tyrttean
ballads "The Hungarian Patriot," and "Larnartine
in February," the politics of which alone would com-
mend them to all readers of this journal, even if their
poetry were less meritorious than in fact it is. Here
then we • take a reluctant leave of Mr. Kent, in the
full confidence that we shall encounter him once
again in that region of high art where he has already
achieved so much and given promise of so much
more. The rich redundancy of his manner requires
occasionally a wise repression ; maturer taste will no
doubt increase the correctness and concentration of his
language; while it is certainly to be hoped that his next
subject will be of more general interest and of more
manageable proportions than the "Doom of Mytho-
logy." These, however, are all errors or judgment,
for which time and experience supply the remedy.
On the other hand, he possesses, in enviable though
imperfectly developed vigour, some of the finest and
rarest attributes of the poetic nature—wealth of words,
grace of fancy, strength and variety of inventiveness.
In these and their careful cultivation reside his future
celebrity. He cannot, we think, fail, if lie be not
wanting to himself. The sterile correctness which
commences its career without fault is certain to con-
clude it without glory. Its highest praise is a kind
of blameless impotence. The exuberant life and
vigorous manhood of Mr. Kent have undoubtedly led
him into some few faults of excess—excess of orna-
ment, excess of epithet, occasional excess of thought;
but what Dryden says of the desire of glory may
truly be affirmed of the occasional outbreak of a rich
and generous nature, it is " a godlike sin" and worth
a whole boarding-school of the tamer virtues. With
such opinions of the position already won by Mr.
Kent, and with such hopes for his future achievement,
we heartily commend his book to our readers, and
himself to " those fresh fields and pastures new"
which few indeed of his cotemporaries are better fitted
to traverse with honour.

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE

BRADFORD REFORM ASSOCIATION.

Sir,—On Monday the 29th, the Member returned for
London was called to the table, and asked by the
Speaker, why he demanded to be sworn on the Old
Testament; to which he replied, that it was because that
WAS the form of swearing that ho declared to be most
binding on his conscience. On which he was directed
to withdraw.

Much skirmishing then ensued upon a motion, that the
Member be asked what Oath he claims to take, whether the
Roman Catholic or the Protestant Oath. On which nobody
succeeded in making plain, or even in asking, whether
the question meant, which of the two Oaths he pre-
terred to take in substance but after his own form, which
was on the Old Testament,—or which of them he preferred
to take in the form in which he would take nothing. If
it was the last, the House was desired to put itselt into
the position of the Frenchman, who asked his chickens
which of two sauces they preferred being eaten with.
And on the cock's saying they did not want to Le eaten
at all, the Frenchman cried " Question, question." If
it was the other, then it was apprehended the enemy
was ready with the assertion, that the Roman Catholic
Oath was rigidly and carefully limited to Roman Ca-
tholics. All of which probably operated in preventing
the point being pushed to an explanation.
This motion being withdrawn, motion was made that
the Member should be asked by the Speaker whether
he was willing to be sworn to the Oaths required of a
Member by Act of Parliament before he takes his seat.
Which being a manifest attempt to obtain an answer in
an adverse form, was opposed and negatived by 118
to 104.

Motion was then made that the House refuses to alter
the form of taking the Oaths. To which Amendment was
moved, that the Clerk be directed to swear the Member
for London on the Old Testament. And after an ad-
journment to five P.M. the original motion was negatived
without a diviAion' and the Amendment carried by 113
to 59; the motive for allowing the original motion to be
thus disposed of, being apparently thy conviction that
the lie. &utiobs promised by the Government would do
the bus:n ss b:st.

On Tuesday shortly after twelve at noon, the Member
for London was again called to the table, and the Oaths
of Allegiance and Supremacy administered to him on the
0:d Testament, the Member, at the instant of kissing the
book, putting on his hat, which may be apprehended to
be a trace of the Oriental feeling, by which an individual
who should uncover his head in presence of his superior,
would be thought guilty of as great a solecism as one of
our ancestors who should have exposed his shaven poll
by taking off his peruke in like circumstances.
The third Oath, that of Abjuration, proceeded in the
same manner till the Clerk came to the words " on the
true frith of a Christian," when the Member said " I
omit those words, as not being binding on my con-
science," and immediately putting on his hat, said " So
help me God," and kissed the book. Upon which he
wes directed by the Speaker to withdraw, a considerable
number of the Members present crying out " No, no,"
and " Sit down."

In the debate which ensued, the Member for Oxford
" town" made one of the most luminous and able plead-
ings produced before any judges. The Attorney-General
followed, and assigned his reasons for the unhappy opi-
nion put forward by the mouth of the Prime Minister on
the previous day, declaring his inability to agree with
the eufficiency of the Oath. Conscience is an intract-
able thing; but what conscience enforced the expression
of this opinion before the case was hoard? It is plain
that the Goverpuient not only discharged their con-
science, but fired it off considerably too soon for a con-
scientious hearing of the question.
As bystanders are proverbially said sometimes to see
more than those who play the game, the observation may
bo hazarded by one in that position, that it might have
been an improvement if on the Clerk's uttering " on the
true faith of a Christian," the Member had said dis-
tinctly " on the true faith of a believer in the Old Tes-
tament," and then finished his oath. This would have
added weight to the strong point of the defence, which
was that the words were part of the form
and not of the substance. It was stated
in conversation, that it would not do to alter
the words of the Oath. But a substitution of this kind
is a smaller alteration of the words of the Oath than leav-
ing them out altogether. Besides which, it strengthens
the claim for their being among the mutatis niutandis.
Is further seemed to be an oversight in a leading ad-
Tecate to volunteer the admission that his client " refused
the words of the Oath." It might be for an
adversary to urge, that he virtually refused. But
the concession should not have been made, and
having been made should be recalled. The fact
is that the Member did not refuse. He stated that he
omitted them as irrelevant. And the way to recover the
lust ground, would be that he should be brought up again,
and on coming to the words, should substitute "on the
true faith of a believer iu the Old Testament." This
vt ould re -open the argument, that he has a right to change
the form; which is exactly what the plea that " he has
refute:]," is intended to preclude.
I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,
AN OLD REFORMER.
London, July 31, 1850.

FALL OF A MILL AT STOCKPORT.

DREADFUL LOSS OF LIFE.

Yesterday afternoon, between one and two o'clock, a
very serious and alarming accident occurred at a mill
belonging to Mr. Cephas Howard, and rented by Mr.
Joseph Heywood as a doubling mill, while the hands
were at dinner. One of the main supports of the build..
ing gave way, and a great portion of it fell, burying 15
or 20 of the hands woo remained inside. Five people
were conveyed to the infirmary, of whom one has died,
and others are expected not to live. At present, none of
those who were completely buried have been recovered,
so that the names are not accurately known ; out we
understand that, in addition to a number of girls who
were dining at the mill, there were some machinists
and workmen who were employ el there temporarily.
It is a fine large fireproof mill, four storeys high; and it
will have to be almost entirely rt buil'. A great portion
of the machinery was all new, and has been entirely
destroyed.

DESTRUCTIVE FIRE. - CHESTER, SATURDAY.-
About a quarter before twelve o'clock last night the exten-
sive steam saw-mills belonging to Messrs. Dickin and Beards-
worth, situate near the Shrewsbury and Chester Canal offices,
at the Canal-wharf, in this city, were discovered to be on
lire. About one o'clock the flames had attained their greatest
height the roof fell in with a terrific crash, and the fiery
elements illuminated the city and surrounding district. In
consequence of the wind blowing very strong at the time
from the north-west, the pieces of burning wood were carried
up in the air and fell on the houses of the residents in King-
rtreet, Northgatc-street, tve., to the great alarm of the inha-
bitants. There was a large quantity of timber in the yard
adjoining the mill, but this was fortunately preserved by the
rain falling heavily at the time, and the large quantity of
water thrown on it by the engines. In a very short time
atter the fire was discovered, the fire brigade, under the di-
rection of Mr. Hill, were on the spot. As they had abun-
dance of water close at band from the canal, they completely
succeeded: in extinguishing the burning embers of the wood.
The tire broke out in the first story of the mill, but whether
it•was tho work of an incendiary or not we cannot at present
learn; yet it appears somewhat strange, as there had been
no tire lighted on the premises from twelve o'clock yesterday.
The damage done is considerable, but the exact amount
cannot be ascertained at present. The premises and stock
are, it is sad, fully insured.

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such orders shall be made payable at any other post-office
which the Postmaster-General shall direct; that such orders
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