forward with a second volume of verse, 'City Poems,' similar in style to his first collection. In 1861 appeared Edwin of Deir.' Nearly all Mr. Smith's poetry bears the impress of youth-excessive imagery and ornament, a want of art and regularity. In one of Miss Mitford's letters we read: 'Mr. Kingsley says that Alfred Tennyson says that Alexander Smith's poems shew fancy, but not imagination; and on my repeating this to Mrs. Browning, she said it was exactly her impression.' The young poet had, however, a vein of fervid poetic feeling, attesting the genuineness of his inspiration, and a fertile fancy that could form brilliant pictures. With diligent study, simplicity, distinctness, and vigour might have been added, had the poet not been cut down in the very flower of his youth and genius. His prose works, Dreamthorp,' 'A Book of Essays, 'A Summer in Skye, and Alfred Hagart's Household,' are admirably writA Memoir of Smith, with some literary remains, was published in 1868, edited by P. P. Alexander.

ten.

Autumn.

The lark is singing in the blinding sky.

Hedges are white with May. The bridegroom sea

Is toying with the shore. his wedded bride,
And. in the fullness of his marriag joy.
He decorates her tawny brow with shells,
Retires a space to see how fair she looks,
Then proud, runs up to kiss her.

All is fair

All glad. from grass to sun! Yet more I love
Than this, the shrinking day, that sometimes comes
In Winter's front, so fair 'mong its dark peers,

It seems a straggler from the files of June,
Which in its wanderings had lost its wits,
And half its beauty; and, when it returned,
Finding its old companions gọn ⋅ away,

It joined November's troop, then marching past;
And so the frail thing comes, and greets the world
With a thin crazy smile, then bursts in tears,
And all the while it holds within its hand

A few half-withered flowers.

Unrest and Childhood.

Unrest! unrest! The passion-panting sea
Watches the unveiled beauty of the stars
Like a great hungry soul. The unquiet clouds

Break and dissolve. then gather in a mass,

And float like mighty icebergs through the blue.
Summers, like blushes, sweep the face of earth;

Heaven yearns in stars. Down comes the frantic rain;
We hear the wail of the remorseful winds

In their strange penance. And this wretched orb
Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world,
Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.

[A child runs past.]

O thon bright thing, fresh from the hand of God;
The motions of thy dancing limbs are swayed
By the unceasing music of thy being!

Nearer I seem to God when looking on thee.
"Tis ages since He made his youngest star,
His hand was on thee as 'twere yesterday.
Thou later revelation! Silver stream,
Breaking with laughter from the lake divine

Whence all things flow. O bright and singing babe,
What wilt thou be hereafter?

GERALD MASSEY, born at Tring, in Hertfordshire, in the year 1828, has fought his way to distinction in the face of severe difficulties. Up to his seventeenth or eighteenth year he was either a factory or an errand boy. He then tried periodical writing, and after some obscure efforts, produced in 1854 the Ballad of Babe Christabel, and other Poems.' a volume that passed through several editions; in 1855, 'War Waits;' in 1856, Craigcrook Castle, and other Poems.' Mr. Massey is author also of Havelock's March,' 1861; Tale of Eternity,' 1869; and of various other pieces in prose and verse. By these publications, and with occasional labours as a journalist and lecturer, he has honourably established himself in the literary profession. His poetry possesses both fire and tenderness, with a delicate lyrical fancy, but is often crude and irregular in style. It is remarkable that the diligence and perseverance which enabled the young poet to surmount his early troubles, should not have been employed to correct and harmonize his verse. Of all the self-taught English poets, Bloomfield seems to have been the most intent on studying good models and attaining to correct and lucid composition. A prose work, Shakspeare and his Sonnet,' by Mr. Massey, is ingenious and well written.

Conclusion of Babe Christabel.

In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till wildered eyes

See white wings lessening up the skies,

The angels with us unawares.

And thon hast stolen a jewel. Death!
Shall light thy dark up like a star,
A beacon kindling from afar

Our light of love, and fainting faith.

Through tears it gleams perpetually,

And glitters through the thickest glooms,
Till the eternal morning comes

To light us o'er the jasper sea.

With our best branch in tenderest leaf,

We've strewn the way our Lord doth come;
And, ready for the harvest-home,

His reapers bind our ripest sheaf.

Our beautiful bird of light hath fled:
Awhile she sat with folded wings-
Sang round us a few hoverings-

Then straightway into glory sped.

And white-winged angels nurture her;

With heaven's white radiance robed and crowned,

And all love's purple glory round,
She summers on the hills of myrrh.
Through childhood's morning-laud, serene
She walked betwixt us twain, like love;
While, in a robe of light above,
Her better angel walked unseen.

Till life's highway broke bleak and wild;
Then, lest her starry garments trail
In mire, heart bleed, and courage fail,
The angel's arms caught up the child.
Her wave of life hath backward rolled

To the great ocean; on whose shore
We wander up and down, to store
Some treasures of the times of oid:
And aye we seek and hunger on

For precious pears and relics rare,
Strewn on the sands for us to wear
At heart, for love of her that's gone.
O weep no more! there yet is balm
In Gilead! Love doth ever shed
Rich healing where it nestles-spread
O'er desert pillows some green palm!

Strange glory streams through life's wild rents,
And through the open door of death
We see the heaven that beckoneth

To the beloved going hence.

God's ichor fills the hearts that bleed;

The best fruit loads the broken bough;
And in the wounds our sufferings plough,
Immortal love sows sovereign seed.

DAVID GRAY.

In 1862 appeared a small volume, 'The Luggie, and other Poems,' by DAVID GREY (1838-1861), with a memoir of the author by James Hedderwick, and a prefatory notice by R. M. Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton. Gray was born on the banks of the Luggie,* and reared in the house of his father, a handloom weaver at Merkland, near Kirkintillock. David was one of a large family, but he was intended for the church, and sent to Glasgow, where he supported himself by teaching, and attended classes in the university for four seasons. The youth, however, was eager for literary fame; he had written thousands of verses, and published from time to time pieces in the Glasgow Citizen,' a journal in which Alexander Smith had also made his first appearance in all the glory of print. In his twenty-second year Gray started off for London, as ambitious and self-confident, and as friendless as Chatterton when he left Bristol on a similar desperate mission. Friends, however, came forward. Gray

The luggie flows past Merkland, at the foot of a precipitous bank, and shortly after wards loses itself among the shadows of Oxgang, with its fine old mansion-house and rookery, and debouches into the Kelvin one of the tributaries of the Clyde. celebrated in Scottish song. It is a mere unpretending rivulet - HEDDERWICK's Memoir of Gray.

had corresponded with Sidney Dobell and Mr. Monckten Milnes, and he became acquainted with Mr. Lawrence Oliphant, and with two accomplished ladies-Miss Coates, Hampstead, and Miss Marion James, an authoress of considerable reputation. Assistance in money and counsel was freely given, but consumption set in, and the poor poet, having longed to return to his native place, was carefully sent back to Merkland. There he wrought hopefully at his poems, and when winter came, it was arranged that he should remove to the south of England.

Mr. Milnes, the kind ladies at Hampstead, and some Scottish friends (Mrs. Nichol, widow of Professor Nichol, Mr. William Logan, and others), supplied the requisite funds, and Gray was placed in a hydropathic establishment at Richmond. Thence he was removed, through the kindness of Mr. Milnes, to Devonshire; but the desire for home again returned, and in the middle of January 1861, the invalid presented himself abruptly at Merkland. 'Day after day,' says Mr. Hedderwick-week after week-month after month-life was now ebbing away from him for ever.' But even under the strong and touching consciousness of an early doom-with the dart of death, like the sword of Damocles, continually suspended over him and visible-Gray continued to weave, in glory, if not in joy, his poetic fancies.' His ardent wish was to see his poems in print, and they were sent to the press. One page was immediately put in type, and the dying poet had the inexpressible gratification of seeing and reading it on the day preceding his death. This was part of a description of a winter scene on the banks of the Luggie:

A Winter Scene.

How beautiful! afar on moorland ways,

Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens
(Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands
Stands like a mournful phantom), hidden clouds

Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch
Is plumed and tasselled. till each heather stalk
Is delicately fringed. The sycamores,
Through all their mystical entanglement

Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green
Of Sweet leaves playing with the subtle air
In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone
Of limber bees that in the monkshood bells
House diligent; the imperishable glow

Of summer sunshine never more confessed
The harmony of nature, the divine
Diffusive spirit of the Beautiful.

Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed,

Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run
The children in bewildering delight.

The young poet received this specimen page as good news,' and said he could now subside tranquilly without tears into his eternal A monument was erected to his memory at Kirkintilloch in 1865, Mr. Henry Glassford Bell, the sheriff of Glasgow, delivering an

rest.

interesting speech on the occasion. The monument bears the following inscription, from the pen of Lord Houghton: This monument of affection, admiration, and regret, is erected to DAVID GRAY, the poet of Merkland, by friends from far and near, desirous that his grave should be remembered amid the scenes of his rare genius and early death, and by the Luggie, now numbered with the streams illustrious in Scottish song. Born 29th January 1838; died 3d December 1861.' Three of the most active of the literary friends of David Gray-namely, Lord Houghton, Mr. Hedderwick (the accomplished and affectionate biographer of the poet), and Sheriff Bell (whose latest literary task was editing a new edition of Gray's Poems) -have borne testimony to the rich though immature genius of this young poet, and to the pure and noble thoughts which fired his ambition, and guided his course through the short period of his life. Besides his principal poem, The Luggie,' Gray wrote a series of Sonnets entitled 'In the Shadow,' which are no less touching than beautiful in composition, and greatly superior to the poetry of Michael Bruce, written under similarly affecting circumstances. An Autumnal Day.

Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved,

And through whose boughs the glimmering sunshine flowed

In rare ethereal jasper, making cool

A chequered shadow in the dark green grass,

I lay enchanted. At my head there bloomed

A hedge of sweet-brier, fragrant as the breath
Of maid beloved, when her cheek is laid
To yours in downy pressure, soft as sleep.
A bank of harebells, flowers unspeakable
For half-transparent azure, nodding, gleamed
As a fain: zephyr, laden with perfume,
Kissed them to motion, gently, with no will.
Before me streams most dear unto my heart,
Sweet Luggie, sylvau Bothlin-fairer twain
Than ever sung themselves into the sea.
Lucid Egean, gemmed with sacred isles-
Were rolled together in an emerald vale;
And into the severe bright noon, the smoke
In airy circles o'er the sycamores
Upcurled a lonely little cloud of blue
Above the happy hamlet. Far away,
A gently rising hill with umbrage clad,
Hazel and glossy birch and silver fir,

Met the keen sky. Oh, in that wood, I know,
The woodruff and the hyacinth are fair

In their own season; with the bilberry

Of dim and misty blue, to childhood dear.

Here on a sunny August afternoon,

A vision stirred my spirit half-awake

To fling a purer lustre on those fields

That knew my boyish footsteps; and to sing
Thy pastoral beauty, Luggie, into fame.

If it must be that I Die young.

If it must be; if it must be, O God!

That I die young, and make no further moans;