in which this gentleman
dandles his kid:--

"We are in the fields. Delight!
Look around! The bird's-eyes bright;
Pink-tipp'd daisies; sorrel red,
Drooping o'er the lark's green bed;
Oxlips; glazed buttercups,
Out of which the wild bee sups;
See! they dance about thy feet!
Play with, pluck them, little Sweet!
Some affinity divine
Thou hast with them, Geraldine.

"Now, sweet wanton, toss them high;
Race about, you know not why.
Now stand still, from sheer excess
Of exhaustless happiness.
I, meanwhile, on this old gate,
Sit sagely calm, and perhaps relate
Lore of fairies. Do you know
How they make the mushrooms grow?
Ah! what means that shout of thine?
_You can't tell me, Geraldine._"

Our extracts are now concluded; and in reviewing them in the mass, we
can only exclaim--this, then, is the pass to which the poetry of England
has come! This is the life into which the slime of the Keateses and
Shelleys of former times has fecundated! The result was predicted about
a quarter of a century ago in the pages of this Magazine; and many
attempts were then made to suppress the nuisance at its fountainhead.
Much good was accomplished: but our efforts at that time were only
partially successful; for nothing is so tenacious of life as the spawn
of frogs--nothing is so vivacious as corruption, until it has reached
its last stage. The evidence before us shows that this stage has been
now at length attained. Mr Coventry Patmore's volume has reached the
ultimate _terminus_ of poetical degradation; and our conclusion, as well
as our hope is, that the fry must become extinct in him. His poetry
(thank Heaven!) cannot corrupt into any thing worse than itself.

FOOTNOTES:

{A} London: Moxon. 1844.

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART XIII.

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

I had been familiar with the debates of the French Convention, and had
witnessed the genius of French eloquence in its highest exertions.
Nothing will cure this people of their aversion to nature. With them,
all that is natural is po