It is not I would hold you.

BOTHWELL. Then farewell,

And keep your word to me. What! no breath more?
Keep then this kiss too with the word you gave,

And with them both my heart and its good hope

To find time yet for you and me. Farewell.

QUEEN. O God! God! God! Cover my face for me:

I cannot heave my hand up to my head;

Mine arms are broken. Is he got to horse?

I do not think one can die more than this.
I did not say farewell.

KIRKALDY. My lord is gone!

Mary leaves Scotland.

SCENE-Dundrennan Abbey.

QUEEN. Methinks the sand yet cleaving to my foot
Should not with no more words be shaken off,
Nor this my country from my parting eyes
Pass unsaluted; for who knows what year
May see us greet hereafter? Yet take heed,

Ye that have ears, and hear me; and take note,
Ye that have eyes and see with what last looks
Mine own take leave of Scotland. Seven years since
Did I take leave of my fair land of France,
My joyous mother, mother of my joy.
Weeping; and now with many a woe between
And space of seven years' darkness, I depart
From this distempered and unnatural earth,
That casts me out unmothered, and go forth
On this gray sterile bitter gleaming sea
With neither tears nor laughter, but a heart
That from the softest temper of its blood
Is turned to fire and iron. If I live,

If God pluck not all hope out of my hand,
If aught of all mine prosper, I that go
Shall come back to men's rain, as a flame

The wind bears down, that grows against the wind,
And grasps it with great hands, and wins its way,
And wins its will, and triumphs; so shall I

Let loose the fire of all my heart to feed

On those that would have quenched it. I will make
From sea to sea one furuace of the land,
Whereon the wind of war shall beat its wings
Till they wax faint with hopeless hope of rest,
And with one rain of men's rebellious blood
Extinguish the red embers. I will leave
No living soul of their blaspheming faith
Who war with monarchs; God shall see me reign
As he shall reign beside me, and his foes
Lie at my foot with mine; kingdoms and kings
Shall from my heart take spirit, and at my soul
Their souls be kindled to devour for prey
The people that would make its prey of them,
And leave God's altar stripped of sacrament
As all kings' heads of sovereignty, and make
Bare as their thrones his temples: I will set
Those old things of his holiness on high
That are brought low, and break beneath my feet
These new things of men's fashion; I will sit
And see tears flow from eyes that saw me weep,

And dust and ashes and the shadow of death
Cast from the block beneath the axe that falls
On heads that saw me humbled; I will do it,
Or bow mine own down to no royal end.
And give my blood for theirs if God's will be,
But come back never as I now go forth
With but the hate of men to track my way,

And not the face of any friend alive.

MARY BEATON. But I will never leave you till you die.

In 1876 Mr. Swinburne published Erechtheus, a Tragedy,' founded on a fragment of Euripides, and characterised by the same fine clasci spirit which distinguished Atalanta in Calydon,' but evincing more matured power and a richer imagination. The poet is young, and we may hope for some still greater work from him.

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

ROBERT BUCHANAN, a native of Scotland, born in 1841, and educated at the High School and University of Glasgow, whilst still a minor produced a volume of poems entitled Undertones,' 1860. He has since published various works and contributed largely to periodicals. Residing mostly at Oban in Argyleshire, the young poet has visited in his yacht and described the picturesque islands and scenes of the Hebrides with true poetic taste and enthusiasm. His prose work, The Land of Lorne,' 2 vols. 1871, contains some exquisite descriptions of the sea-board of Lorne and the outlying isle, from Mull to the Long Island. The poetical works of Mr. Buchanan, besides the Undertones,' are 'Idylls of Inverburn,' 1865; 'London Poems,' 1866; translation of Danish Ballads,' 1866; The Book of Orm, a Prelude to the Epic,' 1870; Napoleon Fallen, a Lyrical Drama,' 1871; 'The Drama of Kings,' 1871; &c. In 1874 Mr. Buchanan commenced the publication of a collected edition of his poeti cal works in five volumes-a very tasteful and interesting reprint.

The Curse of Glencoe.

Alas for Clan Ian! alas for Glencoe!

The lovely are fled, and the valiant are low!

Thy rocks that look down from their cloudland of air,

But shadow destruction, or shelter despair!

No voice greets the bard from his desolate glen,

The music of mirth or the murmur of men;
No voice but the eagle's that screams o'er the slain,
Or sheep-dog that moans for his master in vain.

Alas for Clan Ian! alas for Glencoe!

Our hearths are forsaken, our homesteads are low!
There cubs the red bill-fox, the coy mountain-deer
Disports through our gardens, and feeds without fear.

• The Macdonalds of Glencoe were styled Mac-Jans. the race of John. 'agreeably to practice in use among the clans, in order to distinguish them from other branches of their common name.

Thy sons, a sad remnant, faint, famished. and few,
Look down from the crags of the stern Unagh-dhu-
The voice of thy daughters with weeping and wail
Comes wild from the snows of the bleak Corri-gail.

Ye sleep not, my kinsmen, the sleep of the brave!
The warrior fills not a warrior's grave;

No dirge was sung o'er you, no cairn heaves to tell
Where, butchered by traitors and cowards, ye fell.

Ye died not, my friends, as your forefathers died!
The sword in your grasp, and the foe at your side;
The sword was in sheath, and the bow on the wall,
And silence and slumber in hut and in hall.

They chased on your hills, in your hall did they dine,
They ate of your bread, and they drank of your wine,
The hand clasped at midnight in friendship, was hued
With crimson, ere morn, in your life-streaming blood.

Glenlyon! Glenlyon! the false and the fell!

And Lindsay and Drummond, twin bloodhounds of hell!
On your swords, on your souls, wheresoever ye go,
Bear the burthen of blood, bear the curse of Glencoe!

Its spell be upon you by day and by night

Make you dotards in council, and dastards in fight-
As you knee at the altar, or feast in the hall,
With shame to confound you, with fear to appal;

Its spell be upon you to shrink, when you see
The maid in her beauty, the babe in his glee!-
Let them glare on your vision by field and by flood,
The forms ye have slaughtered, the avengers of blood!

And bark! from the mountains of Moray and Mar,
Round the flag of a King, rise the shouts of a war-
Then, then, false clan Dermid, with wasting and woe
Comes the reckoning for blood, comes the curse of Glencoe!

Youth.

Ah! through the moonlight of Autumnal years

How sweet the back-look of our first youth-world!

Freshlier and earlier the Spring burst then:

The wild brook warbled to a sweeter tune,

Through Summer shaws that screened from brighter suns;
The berry glittered and the brown nut fell

Riper and riper in the Autumn woods:

And Winter drifting on more glorious car,

Shed purer snows or shot intenser frost!

The young were merrier when our life was young;
Dropped mellower wisdom from the tongue of age,
And love and friendship were immortal things;
From fairer lips diviner music flowed;

The song was sacred, and the poet too,
Not art, but inspiration, was his song!

Of Mr. Buchanan's prose description (which is poetry in all but

rhyme or form) we subjoin a specimen:

The Seasons in the Highlands.

As the year passes, there is always something new to attract one who loves nature. When the winds of March have blown themselves faint, and the April heaven has ceased weeping, there comes a rich sunny day, and all at once the cuckoo is heard telling his name to all the hills. Never was such a place for cuckoos in the world. The cry comes from every tuft of wood. from every hillside, from every projecting crag. The bird himself, so far from courting retirement, flutters across your path at every step, attended invariably by half a dozen excited small birds; alighting a few yards off, crouches down for a moment, between his slate-coloured wings; and finally, rising again, crosses your path with his sovereign cry.

O blithe new-comer. I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice.

Then, as if at a given sigual, the trout leaps a foot into the air from the glassy loch, the buds of the water-lily float to the surface, the lambs bleat from the green and heathery slopes; the rooks caw from the distant rookery he cackgrouse screams from the distant hilltop; and the blackthorn begins to blossom over the nut-brown pods of the burn. Pleasant days follow, days of high white clouds and fresh winds whose wings are full of warm dew. If you are a sportsman you rejoice, for there is not a hawk to be seen anywhere, and the weasel and foumart have not yet begun to promenade the mountains. About this time more rain falls, preliminary to a burst of fine summer weather, and innumerable glow-worms light their lamps in the marshes. At last the golden days come, and all things are busy with their young. Frequently in the midsummer, there is drought for weeks together. Day after day the sky is cloudless and blue; the mountain lake sinks lower and lower, till it seems to dry up entirely; the mountain brooks dwindle to mere silver threads for the water-ousel to fly by, and the young game often die for want of water; while afar off, with every red vein distinct in the burning light, without a drop of vapour to moisten his scorching crags, stands Ben Cruachan. By this time the hills are assuming their glory: the mysterious brachen has shot up all in a night, to cover them with a green carpet between the knolls of heather; the lichen is pencilling the crags with most delicate silver, purple, and gold; and in all the valleys there are stretches of light yellow corn and deep-green patches of foliage. The corn-crake has come, and his cry fills the valleys. Walking on the edge of the corn-field you put up the partridges-fourteen cheepers, the size of a thrush, and the old pair to lead them. From the edge of the peat-bog the old cockgrouse rises, and if you are sharp you may see the young following the old hen through the deep heather close by. The snipe drums in the marsh. The hawk, having brought out his young among the crags of Kerrera, is hovering still as stone over the edge of the hill. Then perchance, just at the end of July, there is a gale from the south, blowing for two days black as Erebus with cloud and rain; then going up into the north-west, and blowing for one day with little or no rain; and dying away at last with a cold puff from the north. All at once, as it were, the sharp Bound of firing is echoed from hill to hill; and on every mountain-top you see the sportsman climbing, with his dog ranging above and before him, the keeper following, and the gillie lagging far behind. It is the twelfth of August. Thenceforth for two months at least there are broiling days interspersed with storms and showers, and the firing continues more or less from dawn to sunset.

Day after day, as the autumn advances, the tint of the hills is getting deeper and richer; and by October, when the beech leaf yellows, and the oak leaf reddens, the dim purples and deep greens of the heather are perfect. Of all seasons in Lorne the late autumn is perhaps the most beautiful. The sea has a deeper hue, the sky a mellower light. There are long days of northerly wind, when every crag looks perfect, wrought in gray and gold, and silvered with moss, when the high clouds turn luminous at the edges, when a thin film of hoar-frost gleams over the grass and heather, when the light burns rosy and faint over all the hills, from Morven to Cruachan, for hours before the sun goes down. Out of the ditch at the woodside flaps the mallard, as you pass in the gloaming, and, standing by the side of the small mountain loch, you see the flock of teal rise, wheel thrice, and settle. The

hills are desolate, for the sheep are being smeared. There is a feeling of frost in the air, and Ben Cruachan has a crown of snow.

When dead of winter comes, how wondrous look the hills in their white robes! The round red ball of the sun looks through the frosty steam. The far-off firth gleams strange and ghostly, with a sense of mysterious distance. The mountain foch is a sheet of blue, on which you may disport in perfect solitude from morn to night, with the hills white on all sides, save where the broken snow shews the rusted leaves of the withered bracken. A deathly stillness and a deathlike beauty reign everywhere, and few living things are discernible, save the hare plunging heavily out of he form in the snow, or the rabbit scuttling off in a snowy spray, or the small birds piping disconsolate on the trees and dykes.

WILLIAM MORRIS.

Two poems of great length and undoubted merit, cast in the old story-telling style of Chaucer, and several interesting translations from Icelandic authors, have been produced by WILLIAM MORRIS, London, born in 1834, and educated at Exeter College, Oxford. The first work of Mr. Morris was a poem, "The Defence of Guenevere,' 1858. This was followed by The Life and Death of Jason,' 1867a poem in seventeen books, presenting a series of fine pictures and bright clear narratives flowing on in a strain of pure and easy versification. The next work of the author was a still more voluminous Certain gen. poem. The Earthly Paradise,' in four parts, 1868–70. tlemen and mariners of Norway, having considered all that they had heard of the Earthly Paradise, set sail to find it, and after many troubles, and the lapse of many years, came old men to some western land, of which they had never before heard: there they died, when they had dwelt there certain years, much honoured of the strange people.' The author says of himself

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate

To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.

Folk say, a wizard to a northern king

At Christmas tide such wondrous things did shew,
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard. but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day.

In the manner of this northern wizard, Mr. Morris presents the tales of his Earthly Paradise' under the aspects of the different seasons of the year. The first and second parts range from March to August, and include fourteen tales-Atalanta's Race, the Doom of King Acrisius, Cupid and Psyche, the Love of Alcestis, the Son of Croesus, Pygmalion and the Image, Ogier the Dane, and others. Part III., or September, October, and November,' contains the Death of Paris, the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, the