humorous. In his fragment on Connecticut,
there is a picture which could only have been
drawn by a humourously observant mind:

'Tis a rough land of earth, and stone, and tree,
    Where breathes no castled lord or cabined slave;
Where thoughts, and tongues, and hands are bold and free,
    And friends will find a welcome, foes a grave;
And where none kneel, save when to heaven they pray,
    Nor even then, unless in their own way.

Theirs is a pure republic, wild yet strong,
    A " fierce democracie" where all are true,
To what themselves have voted—right or wrong—
    And to their laws denominated blue;

* * * *

A justice of the peace for the time being,
    They bow to, but may turn him out next year;
They reverence their priest, but disagreeing
    In price or creed, dismiss him without fear;
They have a natural talent for foreseeing
    And knowing all things; and should Park appear
From his long tour in Africa, to show
The Niger's source; they'd meet him with—we know.

They love their land because it is their own,
    And scorn to give aught other reason why;
Would shake hands with a king upon his throne,
    And think it kindness to his majesty;
A stubborn race fearing and flattering none,
    Such are they nurtured, such they live and die;
All but a few apostates, who are meddling
    With merchandise, pounds, shillings, pence, and peddling;

Or wandering through the southern countries, teaching
    The A B C from Webster's spelling-book:
Gallant and godly, making love and preaching,
    And gaining, by what they call " hook and crook"
And what the moralists call over-reaching,
    A decent living. The Virginians look
Upon them with as favourable eyes
    As Gabriel on the devil in Paradise.

But these are but their outcasts. View them near
    At home, where all their worth and pride is placed;
And there their hospitable fires burn clear,
    And there their lowliest farm-house is graced
With manly hearts, in piety sincere,
    Faithful in love, in honour stern and chaste,
In friendship warm and true, in danger brave,
    Beloved in life, and sainted in the grave.

There can be little doubt of this being
poetry—indebted, however, unquestionably for
the form in which it appears to the irresistible
example set by " Beppo," and " Don
Juan." No inhabitant of Great Britain
moreover can think there is anything foreign
about the shrewd good folks described. They
are just ourselves with more of their own
and our own way. In his poem on Alnwick
Castle, Mr. Halleck describes one of the castles,
none of which are to be seen in his own country,
with which the traditions of his ancestors as
of ours are associated—for in this our English
brotherhood, there have occurred strange ups
and downs, and there have been discovered
wonderful relationships. I myself knew the
last of the Plantagenets as a grave-digger; and
I had a friend, the owner of a castle and seven
thousand pounds a year, whose heir (unknown
to him), was found (ignorant of his heirship) in
the backwoods of the Far West. The Connecticut
poet hails in Alnwick Castle the
      Home of the Percy's highborn race,
          Home of their beautiful and brave;
      Alike their birth and burial place,
          Their cradle and their grave.

"The lion above the castle-gate, the feudal
banners above the tower, the warriors in stone,
the gentle green hill, the quiet stream, are the
features of a spot where Hotspur and his bride
Katherine, were seated a thousand years ago."
He notices next the ruins of the abbey, with
their ivy and roses, the crusader's tomb, the
relics of border story, and the lore of centuries
since:

                              the startled bird
First in her twilight slumbers heard
    The Norman's curfew bell.

I wandered through the lofty halls
    Trod by the Percys of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel walls
    Each high heroic name
From him who once his standard set
Where now, o'er mosque and minaret,
    Glitter the sultan's crescent moons;
To him who, when a younger son,
Fought for King George at Lexington
    A major of dragoons.

* * * *

This last half stanza—it has dashed
    From my warm lip the sparkling cup.
The light that o'er my eyebeam flashed
    The power that bore my spirit up
Above this bank-note world, is gone;
And Alnwick's but a market-town,
And this, alas! its market-day,
And beasts and borderers throng the way;
Oxen and bleating lambs in lots,
Northumbrian boors and plaided Scots,
    Men in the coal and cattle line;
From Teviots bard and hero land,
From Royal Berwick's beach of sand,
From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and
    Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,
    So dazzling to the dreaming boy;
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of knights, but not of the Round Table,
    Of Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy:
'Tis what our " President" Monroe
    Has called ' the era of good feeling;"
The Highlander, the bitterest foe
To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,
And put on pantaloons and coat,
    And leave off cattle-stealing.

Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,