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When blood-besotted Anarchy

Sank quelled amid the roar

Of thy far-sweeping musketry, Eventful Thermidor!

Again he grasps the victor-crown

Marengo's carnage yields—

Or bursts o'er Lodi, beating down

Bavaria's thousand shieldsThen turning from the battle-sod, Assumes the Consul's palmOr seizes giant-empire's rod

In solemn Notre-Dame.

And darker thoughts oppress him nowHer ill-requited love,

Whose faith as beauteous as her brow

Brought blessings from aboveHer trampled heart-his darkening starThe cry of outraged Man

And white-lipped Rout, and Wolfish War, Loud thundering on his van.

Rave on, thou far-resounding Deep,
Whose billows round him roll!
Thou'rt calmness to the storms that sweep
This moment o'er his soul.

Black chaos swims before him, spread

With trophy-shaping bones;
The council-strife, the battle-dead,
Rent charters, cloven thrones.

Yet, proud One! could the loftiest day
Of thy transcendent power,
Match with the soul-compelling sway
Which, in this dreadful hour,
Aids thee to hide, beneath the show
Of calmest lip and eye,

The hell that wars and works below-
The quenchless thirst to die?

The white dawn crimson'd into morn-
The morning flashed to day-
And the sun followed glory-born,
Rejoicing on his way—

And still o'ér ocean's kindling flood
That muser cast his view,

While round him awed and silent stood
His fate's devoted few.

O for the sulphureous eve of June,
When down that Belgian hill
His bristling Guards' superb platoon
He led unbroken still!

Now would he pause, and quit their side

Upon destruction's marge,

Nor king-like share with desperate pride
Their vainly glorious charge?

No-gladly forward he would dash
Amid that onset on,

Where blazing-shot and sabre-crash
Pealed o'er his empire gone-
There, 'neath his vanquished eagles tost,
Should close his grand career,

Girt by his heaped and slaughtered host.
He lived-for fetters here!

Enough-in moontide's yellow light
Cape Ushant melts away-

Even as his kingdom's shattered might
Shall utterly decay-

Save when his spirit-shaking story,

In years remotely dim,

Warms some pale minstrel with its glory To raise the song to Him.

THE FLIGHT TO CYPRUS.

De Vere has loos'd from Ascalon-Judea's holy gale,

Fresh with the spikenard's evening scent, is rustling in his sail;

A victor he to Normandy ploughs homeward through the brine,

Herald and harp shall laud him long for deeds in Palestine.

How gallantly, as night comes down, upon the Syrian seas,

The Bel-Marie all canvas crowds to catch the springing breeze.

A prosperous course be hers!-the spears above her poop that gleam

Have flash'd ere now, like stars, I trow, on Siloa's solemn stream.

Precious the freight that proud bark bears-the ransom and the spoil

Reap'd from Mahound's blaspheming crew on many a field of toil;

Large lustrous cups-Kathay's bright robes-the diamond's living rays—

Carpets from Tyre, whose costly fire for kings alone should blaze;

And worth them all, that Fairest One, whose tresses' sunny twine,

Far down unroll'd, outshames the gold of tawny India's mine;

When storm'd the Cross round Gaza's fosse, all

bright but faithless, she

Fled from her Emir-spouse, De Vere's light paramour to be.

And now, when sultry day is done, her languid

brow to cool,

Soft couch'd upon the curtain'd deck reclines the

Beautiful;

Voluptuous in repose, as she who, 'mid the Egean | Raised like an evening star her head, and look'd Isles, upon the night, Rose radiant from the frowning deep, she dazzled Praying the tardy moon to rise-and through the into smiles.

Fast by that lady's pillow sits the passionate De
Vere,

shadows dim,

Encountering but that spectral form beside the rudder grim.

Now dimming with his doating kiss the glory of The moon at last!-blood-red and round, she her hair; wheeleth up the wave, Or watching till their sleepy lids her eyes' blue Soaring and whitening like a soul ascending from languish veilthe grave;

Or murmuring on her lips of rose fond love's un- Then riseth too the Beauty-brow'd, and quits with tiring tale.

Yet restless all is her repose, no solace can she find;

gentlest motion

Her tent's festoons,-two rival Moons at once upon the ocean!

The press of canvas overhead hoarse-groaning in O Queen of Quiet-thou who winn'st our adoration the windstill,

The cordage-strain-the whistling shrouds-De As when a wondering world bow'd down on thine Ephesian hill!—

Vere's devoted words

All things, or soft or sullen, now disturb her spirit's Stainless thyself, impart thy calm and purifying chords.

"In vain thy love would lull my ear, thou flattering knight, for whom

I faithless fled my lord and land!—methinks that, through the gloom,

Some fearsome Genii's mighty wings are shadowing my soul,

grace,

To her, the stain'd one, watching thee with her resplendent face!

The breeze has dropp'd-the soundless sails are flagging one by one;

While in his cabin still De Vere the parchment

pores upon;

Black as the clouds and waters now that round Sudden a shriek-a broken groan, his ear have

about us roll."

"Ah, cheer thee, sweet-'tis but the rude and restless billows' heaving,

That frets thy frame of tenderest mould with

weariness and grieving;

"Twill vanish soon: when mounts the moon at midnight from the sea,

Sweet Cyprus, with its rosy rocks high shining on our lee,

smitten-hark!

That laughing yell!-sure fiends from hell are hailing to the Bark!

He gains the deck-the spot where last idolatrous he stood,

Is cross'd by some dark horrid thing-a narrow creeping flood;

Great Heaven forbid !-but where's the heart from whence it gush'd?--for now

"Shall see us anchor'd-if the truth our Moorish The decks contain no form but that stone-stiff be

pilot tell,

Who, since we weigh'd, has steer'd for us so steadily and well.

E'en now I go to track below our bearings by the chart;

With freight like thee can I be free from wistfulness of heart?"

De Vere is gone.

side the prow.

Stone-stiff-half life, half death-it stands with hideous terror dumb,

And bristling hair, and striving still for words that will not come:

Speak thou-speak thou, who from the prow kept watch along the water,

His silent crew, from all the And kill thy lord with one dread word of Gaza's

decks above, Descend, lest even a murmur mar the slumbers of

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Pavilion-screen'd, from her soft couch how oft The Evil One, in semblance of their Moorish

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Who stole to her, before that boy could cross him- | Where olive-groves their shadows fling from Cyprus' musky shore,

self for grace, His turban doff'd, then touch'd her arm, and stared The Bel-Marie high stranded lies, to plough the her in the face

waves no more;

That furnace-stare!--her scorch'd head droop'd-And day by day, far, far away, in Rouen's aisles a flash-at once she fell

I ween,

Prone at his feet, who instantly sprang with her Down-broken, like that stately bark, a mournful down to hell! monk is seen.

EARL CAI R N S.

[The career of Lord Cairns is one of the most remarkable of any man even among the brilliant band who have risen to the same great height. His life has been an unbroken series of triumphs; and even those who have no love for his politics cannot deny that those triumphs have been legitimately earned. Lord Cairns owes his success to the sheer force of great abilities.

Hugh M'Calmont Cairns was born on December 27, 1819, and is the son of William Cairns, Esq., of Cultra, county Down. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he had a distinguished undergraduate career, obtaining first class in classics. He graduated B.A. in 1838. In January, 1844, he was called to the English bar at the Middle Temple.

Before long he became one of the most largely employed barristers in the courts of equity; and while still a stuff-gownsman could boast of a larger practice than the majority of those at the inner bar. In 1856 he was made a queen's counsel and a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. He had meantime entered upon another and more important career, having been elected Conservative member for Belfast in 1852, and the time soon came when this position placed the highest gifts of the legal profession at his disposal. In February, 1858, he was made solicitor-general in the administration of Lord Derby. Promotion to office so high after but fourteen years' practice at the bar was almost unprecedented; but the comments of the profession and the press were unanimously favourable.

The new solicitor-general soon proved the wisdom of Lord Derby's choice. The successful lawyer is frequently a terrible parliamentary failure; but the part Sir Hugh Cairns took in the great debate on Lord Ellenborough's censure of Lord Canning's proclamation proved his right to a place in the front rank of parlia

mentary orators. His fame as a speaker was established; and from this time forward he was recognized as one of the great debaters, who, if they cannot sway divisions-which no orator almost ever does in a representative assembly -can excite the enthusiasm of friends and the dread of foes.

Lord Derby's resignation in December, 1858, deprived Sir Hugh Cairns of office. When his chief returned to power in June, 1866, he became attorney-general. This post he did not long hold, accepting in the October following a lord-justiceship of appeal. In February, 1867, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cairns of Garmoyle in the county of Antrim; and just about a year afterwards (February, 1868) he became Lord-chancellor of England. After the retirement of the ministry in 1868 he assumed for a while the responsible position of leader of the Conservative party in the House of Peers. When the Conservatives returned to office in February, 1874, he resumed his place of lord-chancellor. In September, 1878, he was still further advanced, attaining the honour of an earldom-a dignity that has not been reached by some of the most brilliant of his predecessors.

The style of Lord Cairns's eloquence is chaste. He rarely soars to high flights, and he is deficient in humour. His great merit is perfect lucidity of expression, so that his arguments are always presented as if they formed tightly-bound links in an unbroken chain of reasoning.]

ON THE OUDE PROCLAMATION.

[In the course of the session of 1858, when the Derby-Disraeli government was in power, Lord Ellenborough, who was president of the Board of Control, got his party into trouble

by his treatment of Lord Canning, then Gov- | into our allegiance, and that the hostilities in ernor-general of India. Lord Canning had Oude were rebellion and not war. Sir, these issued a proclamation to the people of Oude, assertions I deny, and my denial is capable of making considerable changes in the tenure of easy proof. I do not now desire to enter into land there, and Lord Ellenborough, before he the merits of the question of the annexation received the full text of the document, wrote of that kingdom. That is a question which a despatch strongly denouncing it.. A storm never has been, and in all probability never was raised in the House of Commons, and will be, discussed in this house as fully as it several motions of censure on the ministry might deserve. In speaking of the subject I were proposed. Lord (then Sir Hugh) Cairns will only say that the strongest feeling by as solicitor-general made, in the speech from which I was impressed upon reading the papers which we give the following extract, one of connected with it—and I have read them carethe ablest defences of the government.] fully-was the hope that history may be as lenient to us with regard to that transaction as we have been to ourselves. But, declining to open up that large question, I shall proceed to deal with facts about which there can be no dispute. In the year 1856 the treaty which the East India Company asserted was the treaty regulating our relations with the King of Oude, was a treaty made in 1801, which contained a clause guaranteeing to the vizier, his heirs and successors, the possession of their territories, together with the free exercise of their authority within their dominions. In the year 1856, however, the East India Company, considering that the kingdom of Oude was misgoverned, deemed that the misgovernment conferred upon them the right, I do not say whether justly or unjustly, to annex that territory to our possessions in India. How did they carry the right into effect? Substantially by means of conquest. A commissioner was sent to Oude. A body of British troops crossed the Ganges. A treaty was presented to the king, who refused to sign the treaty; and he was consequently dethroned, his palace taken possession of, his property sold, his ministers either made prisoners or held to bail.

A judgment upon that proclamation may be formed by having recourse to a very trite dilemma. Either it is right, or it is wrong. If it is right, and if the principles which it enunciates are principles just and politic, the government, beyond all doubt, was wrong in censuring it at all, and still more wrong in making that censure public. But if, upon the other hand, the principles which are embodied in that proclamation are neither consistent with justice nor in conformity with sound policy, then I challenge the right hon. gentleman to show upon what good grounds he calls upon the house to censure the condemnation of that which in itself is contrary to justice and to policy.

Now let me ask, to whom was this proclamation intended to be addressed? Not to the sepoys of India. They were mutineers in the strictest sense of the word. They had eaten our bread and received our pay. They were our sworn subjects, bound to us by every tie of allegiance and fidelity. They threw off that allegiance and rebelled. In the course of that rebellion they committed acts of murder, deeds of cruelty and treachery, cold-blooded, wilful, and deliberate. They were-or, at all events, many of them were-persons whose hands were stained by crimes of the deepest dye. Under these circumstances their lives and property were sacrificed by their crimes. But it was not to them, but to the king and people of Oude, this proclamation of Lord Canning was addressed. What says Mr. Edmonstone, the secretary to the chief commissioner of Oude? He states in the nineteenth paragraph that the proclamation was addressed to the chiefs and inhabitants of Oude, and not to the mutineers. But what was the kingdom of Oude? Our relations with it were relations of conquest, and not of allegiance. I know it has been said that Oude had voluntarily become incorporated with our dominions that its people had willingly come

I do not say whether this was right or wrong I will assume it to be right. But I still confidently ask whether the case of Oude was one of voluntary submission or of simple conquest and annexation? My answer to the question is that our relations with Oude were relations of conquest. All that was done there was done under protest, and that protest continued until the sepoy revolt broke out. The people of Oude, which was under forced submission, taking advantage of that rebellion, made war against England-war, I admit, stained by bloody and barbarous crimes, but still war. By the valour of our troops poured into the country, the skill and energy of our commander-in-chief-and, I cheerfully and gratefully add, by the skill and energy of

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